NortHWizarD

just a small update for now... well, not so small, and also somewhat of a small, non-official review of the case at the same time:

The case and all the parts I bought with it arrived yesterday (tuesday) and it seems to have weathered the shipping fairly well - no visible damage that I could find.
I haven't had a lot of time to really check it out or go through the stuff yet, but I have to give my thumbs-up/seal of approval to the guy I bought it all from... Overk1ll - he did a great job with the packaging, it was shipped through UPS and got here extremely fast considering how much distance is between the 2 of us, and everything thing he said he would toss in is all there and the stuff came pretty much exactly as he described it to me. he is defintely a good guy to deal with... I am very happy with how things went.

OK, on to the update...

First, I will start with the case, well actually, that is all I am going to deal with for this update. I have to say that I am not totally impressed with this case... yeah, it's a nice case, but now that I have one, I am very glad I never went out and bought one for 300 bucks or more... it is just not worth that much in my opinion. The fit and finish is decent on it, and it is constructed well, but it is kind of flimsy, well at least the cover is... which is one of my biggest complaints with this case. the cover is all one piece... a top and 2 sides, all as one complete unit - this makes it a real pain in the butt to take off and put back on - they should have made it 3 seperate panels... that would have made it far better to work with and then you also wouldn't have a flimsy and bendable cover on it and could just remove the one panel you need when you want to do some work on it.
This is something I will be changing pretty much right away - making the cover become 3 individual panels instead of one single one.
Another complaint is the fact that the front 3 - 120mm fan holes are spaced to fit a rad, which is great for water cooling... BUT, they are spaced to fit one, and only one, brand of rad - a Thermochill 120.3
The Thermochill line of rads space the fans farther apart than the other manufacturers do, so you can't put a black ice or swiftech (or one of the other, less popular brands) in the front panel of the case without building a custom shroud or doing some serious modding to it. Yes, Thermochill rads are a very good rad, no doubt about it, but they are also very expensive compared to the other brands and for the money, not all THAT much better... especially with the new Black Ice rads that came out not long ago, the Gen2 series. To me, it doesn't make sense to build such an expensive case and then make it so that it will only fit one brand of rad, which is also the most expensive there is... it would be smarter to make the case fit the most popular rads... the rads there are far more of out there... and also be able to fit more than one brand of rad, and then *maybe* make an adapter to fit the larger thermochill rads if it was called for. It is far easier to make a shroud that goes from a smaller fan setup to a larger rad, than it is to go backwards... being that the fans are spaced farther apart, you just can't mount any other rad there (well... I have the fix for that, and have had it for months and months now and never knew it would come in so handy as I never realized these cases were built like this) - you will see how I go about converting the front (and rear) of this case to accept *all* brands of rads and at the same time, give it a face-lift and make it look even better - and this option will be available to anyone and won't be all that expensive... 30$ or less I am suspecting.
Now I know there are different models of these cases, but the one I have here has another piece I am not impressed with... the back of the case, on the side that does not house the motherboard (it is where all the drives go) has a hard drive cage on the back of it which holds a crap load of hard drives, which is awesome if you want to run a bunch of raid setups or use more than 4 hard drives... but most of us do not do that, so it is kind of a waste... but what really ticked me off was seeing that the cooling for that cage is done by 3 x 80mm fans... WTF? 80mm???? c'mon... 80mm fans are just not what is needed for this case... the case has a total of 7 - 120mm fans on/in it, and then they go and put 3 - 80mm ones in the back. Yes, they are basically the same size as a hard drive, so it made it easy for them when they built the case... the fans being that size mean you do not have to make a hard drive cage that is shaped like a shroud - bent out to be bigger on one end to cover a 120mm fan, or 2 fans for that matter... but what even gets me more is that I want a rad there instead of the hard drives... so that means doing something to get rid of those 3 - 80mm fans and replace them with 120mm ones... just something that could have been very easily done when designing/building this case since it is geared towards water cooling more than anything else. try finding a 3x80mm rad LMAO... and if oyu do, would you really want to use it when there are awesome 120mm rads out there and you will already have a 120.3 rad in the front?
that's ok, the same thing that is correcting the problem with the front will fix the problem with the back as well, and I will post pics of that as soon as I have them and have the stuff ready - the autocad drawings are being emailed out before noon today to get the parts made up for this.
Another thing is the sliding motherboard tray... it feels a little cheap and it isn't a *sliding* motherboard tray, although it is removeable, but it can be a real pain to line up and then get a screw in when you have a motherboard on it. Wire management, because of this case's sheer size, should not be to hard, but again, more attention could have been paid to that area - there could have been some holes drilled in the back panel/motherboard tray, and possibly some channel or something along that line ot route wires form one side to the other easily, and have some small holes for tying the wiring to with wire ties or something.
The dual PSU setup is extremely nice in this case, and I will most defintely be putting both areas to use with PSU's. One for the computer system, and the other for cooling and lights etc.
My last, and most minor beef with this case is the same one the previous owner had with it... if you put a PSU in the space over/above the motherboard, you either have to flip the cover around so that teh 120mm fans that are on the top of the cover are at the front of the case (or not put fans in those holes, which would look stupid and defeat the reason for having fan holes there) or they will hit the power supply and the cover will not fit on - this is probably only an issue with the cases that have the window on the top, but instead, they could have used either a larger window and then put the fans in teh window, or went with a smaller window and moved the position of the fans... or even placed the fans centered (front to back) on the top of the case and then put 2 slim width windows on either side of the fans... there are numerous ways to do it, but in my opinion, this way isn't what I would have chose.
lastly, the front section where the optical drives go (the 5.25" bays) is just an open area... no cover plates, no nothing... you have to buy plates to cover whatever you do not use... good thing the lian li covers fit in it so well, but again, more costs you have to shell out to finish the case... and there is no floppy drive area... you have to use an adapter to fit teh floppy into one of the 5.25 bays... so, most normal people would not fill all the bays and would have to order and pay for bay covers, or live with open sections.
I know it sounds like I am really ragging hard on this case, and in a way I sort of am... they are worth a LOT of money when it comes to a computer case... and that being said, there are some really great cases out there for the same, or less money, that are built far better and look way better, albeit they do not have the size this case does... cases such as almost any of the high-end Lian Li's - they, in my opinion, are far superior to this case and if I were to spend 300$ or more on a case, it would be on a Lian Li, or Silverstone... or even a Coolermaster. Yes, I love the size and layout of this case, do not get me wrong, and it will be excellent for what I want to do with it - there is just so much room inside of it... it will be easy to make an awesome water cooling loop in it... heck, you could, quite easily, fit a phase change unit in the one side and still have room for a water cooling loop for cooling other parts of the computer! :) a small child could possibly get lost in this thing LMAO

Now, if these were price a little lower... I would not complain at all... the reason I have said all this is because, at their high price, aside form the room I do not think you are getting what you pay for, and I am glad I got it for how much I did... and personally... if I could go back, I would be hesitant to pay what I actually DID pay for it now that I have seen it and had a close look at it... the last thing people want to do is start hacking and cutting a $350 case... it really makes you get queezy putting a cutting blade to it after dropping that much coin.
Now, on the good side... the case, like I said, has tons of room, can easily house 2 large rads (a 120.3 and a 120.2) and could also fit a couple single 120mm rads if a person wanted to do that. It will also be easy to use 1/2" tubing in this case without having to worry so much about getting it to fit and look good. Having the capability of running dual power supplies without any modifications is a huge bonus for people who push things a little farther than normal... even if you were to just use the second one to power a pair of SLI'd video cards and some fans.

I will be posting pictures sometime today yet of the case, together and apart and will show all the things I discussed here, pointing each thing out so you all have a better idea of what these cases are truly like. I have no reasons to play favorites especially since the case was something I bought on my own.. so I will show everything... the good and the bad, and let people make up their own minds.
I will also be doing a complete and full review of the case, outside of this worklog, so that people can know exactly what they are getting before ordering one of them... I am not saying people shouldn't buy them... not at all... I am just wanting to show people exactly what they get and what the cases are, in detail, so that they can make up their own minds and decide if the case suits their needs and wants before sheeling out their hard-earned money.
check back later today for a bunch of pics of the case and all the other stuff that came with it, along with some other stuff I have stored up for this build.

g'night,

~NortH~