Fractal’s Arc Midi might be designed for a dual fan top-mounted radiator, but that doesn’t mean two single-fan units can fit. Though it might have been possible to position these side-by-side within the empty case, tanks on the top and bottom would have prevented motherboard and side panel installation. Generally, we like our PCs to include motherboards.

Instead, one radiator needs to be installed on the top panel and the other on the rear panel. Both are fitted with their fans blowing out of the case as exhaust, pulling heat away from memory and voltage regulator components.

The snap-off front panel comes with a single intake fan. Since our radiators have their own fans, the original rear-panel exhaust fan is snapped into the spare front-panel mount as an extra intake.

The Arc Midi’s sliding trays each hold a 3.5” drive on vibration-dampening grommets using shoulder screws, or a 2.5” drive without grommets using standard screws. Since the 2.5” drives most often found in full-sized systems are SSDs, the lack of noise dampening for this form factor is acceptable.

The top-mounted radiator is placed in the case's forward mounting position to make room for the thicker radiator on the rear panel. Had the thicker radiator been mounted on top, it would have prevented memory installation. We also like our PCs to include memory.

The finished system is particularly attractive to users who don’t like the distraction of gaudy lights.
- A Bigger Budget For A Better PC
- Motherboard, CPU, And RAM
- Graphics, Case, And Power
- SSD, Hard Drive, And Optical Drive
- The Build
- Overclocking
- Test Settings
- Benchmark Results: 3DMark And PCMark
- Benchmark Results: SiSoftware Sandra
- Benchmark Results: Crysis And F1 2010
- Benchmark Results: Just Cause 2 And Metro 2033
- Benchmark Results: Audio And Video Encoding
- Benchmark Results: Productivity
- Power, Heat, And Efficiency
- Are Liquid-Cooled Graphics Cards Worth The Extra Expense?
Also, as much as I understand the frustration with sacrifices, IMHO that's where the best lessons are.
Fun to read, yes, but just not practical. Hmmm, I guess that means the downvoting is about to begin...
Also, as much as I understand the frustration with sacrifices, IMHO that's where the best lessons are.
Fun to read, yes, but just not practical. Hmmm, I guess that means the downvoting is about to begin...
So, I wait until tomorrow to enter?
No, you're good today. It should start with today's story. I'll see if I can get that changed.
Its also half the price.
Toms needs more current benchmarks, some of these games were talking are ages old. And need i say we need a RTS game in this mixture. I am a bit disappointed that the 3930k wasn't in this build along with a nice X79 board. Not that a 2600k processor isn't fast enough but you never know. I would rather pick up my six core but thats just me, and most likely it could be a waste. But like i said you never know, i remember SupCom came out and that required some CPU multi core power. Not sure how many cores were needed but a Quad was definitely better then a Dual core.
Considering the price of the 2 gtx580s, 3 hd6950s might offer better value - as long as the game allows multi-gpus.
You can compare the two by using another article by Thomas Soderstrom that also utilizes the i7-2600k but is looking at SLI/Crossfire scaling.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crossfire-sli-3-way-scaling,2865.html
In the 3 games that the two systems both had shared benchmarks, the 3x 6950 was the clear winner.
Toms, can we get some reviews on how the computers from each bracket compare year over year as a general summary to end the year out? I would love to see what $2000 gets you in 2010 vs 2011, and even 2009. My bet is that there would be some decent changes over the last 2 years as everything has droped in price with the exception of those peskey hard drives.