Vista - If you had about 150 to 175 to spare...

Which Gaming Case would you buy and why?

If you can, can you tell me if the "why" is because of first hand experience or reviews on some other site?

I am ready to pull the pin on a case since I seem to be having issues with high temps with the case I own right now and I am not handymand enough to dremmel the hell out of it to install more fans.

I have look, search, read and read some more but there are to many options and I will like to know what you guys use and how you like them so far.

antec 900 all the way, heres a few pics of my antec 900 and my temps right now

Yes, the antec 900 is on the list of cases I was looking at. How many fans does the Antec 900 comes with?

What kind of CPU Cooler is that? Reason I ask you is because the instructions on my Artic Pro 7 stated that the fan should be pointed towards the back of the case and yours look like its pointing to the front.

Also, are those temps at idle or while gaming? if at idle, those are pretty much the temps I see on my rig so I don't know if the expenditure to get that case is worth it.

the case comes with 4 fans, two at the front, one as an exhaust and one at the very top, the cpu fan is blowing toward the exhaust fan, thats why my cpu and general system temperature is so cool, my processor is overclocked to 3Ghz(my temp before the overclock is attached to this) and my gpu is a 260GTX which is renown to overheat, mine is always at 45-49c and only goes upto 69c when gaming. The CPU fan is a zalman cnps9700 tritium (nvidia edition).

Yes, I just looked at the CPU cooler picture again and it is pointing towards the back. I don't know why I thought it was the other way around.

So, you are saying that idleing temps of mid 40's are cool temps for a CPU? Mine is also OC'ed a bit but I have heard others that are running low 30's so I figured mine was somehow buggered!

Perhaps I can invest that money on another gtx260 then?

Yes, my GTX260 runs extremely hot. Well, when compared with the temps of my old 8800GT. I guess the treshold of the gtx260 temps are much higher than others?

Antec 900 or Antec 1200. My last case was the 900 and my current one is the 1200. Both are great cases, lots of cooling and the 1200 has a TON of space and makes cable management easier.

If you had the cash and don't mind the size I would go with the 1200.

Antec 900 has 4 fans but room for 6, the 1200 has 6 fans but room for 8.

When you say "Room" for 6 (900) or 8 (1200), does that means they come with the holes to just install more fans or you need to dremmel your way into making the holes to install the extra fans?

Hi AstaLaVista, if you are going to get another GPU, the Ultra Aluminus will give you heat problem for sure. There will be a pocket of hot air trapped at the spot between the GPUs and the HDDs. Either you can add an exhaust fan there as shown in pix below or get a case which you are able to mount the PSU at the bottom so there will have ample space for fresh air circulation for the GPU turbines air intake.

Also, I may check check to make sure your PSU has sufficient amps for SLi.

Here is my $.02, I wouldn't spend more then $75 on a case. Imagine what a $100 will do if invest in a CPU or GPU.



Hope this helps,

Bruce

the reason i said it was cool is because my pentium 4 with stock fan was nicely cooking on idle at 50c and 70c under load, so i didnt really have good cooling with the crap case i had before, my system used to look like this:

Coolermaster 690 would be my choice, a bit cheaper than Antec 900 and 1200 I think.

Mine came with 3 fans inside I think(1 front, side and back). There's space for 2 on top (depending on size of CPU cooler, I can only fit 1), and 1 on bottom.

I have 1 fan on top, 1 front, 1 bottom, 1 side and 1 back right now, and temps are fine. CPU gets about 30C idle and only about 40C while gaming. GPU is about 40-50 idle and high 50s when gaming.

Although I have the Nvidia Edition of this case, I still think the normal 690 looks nice, too.