Acrylic Case Considerations

savedr

Hello, juys. I'm planning on building a semi-serious system over this year, and I have some questions about acrylic cases.

1. I saw the thread on etching acrylic, even though this is absolutely not why I want an acrylic case. Actually if I got an acrylic case I'd leave it more or less completely stock. If I really got a bug about it, I might do a very pixellated 'savedR' in like 8-bit NES font on the side panel. Is this awesome (y/n)?

2. I've noticed that, somewhat alarmingly, acrylic cases seem to go for about the same amount of money or much less than what normal steel cases go for. For example, on Xoxide, the X-Clear Acrylic case is only $59.99 base, and only like $77.98 with four blue-LED 80nm fans added. (About half of the other components I've already picked out have blue LEDs, so this is awesome.) Since the price is the same or way lower than most other steel/aluminum cases on the market, and since (to me at least) the asthetic appeal is almost infinitely higher, what's the downside?

3. I know people are going to respond "COOLING" as one of the answers to my second point. On the Xoxide store, there are 48 customer-taken Product Shots, meaning that a number of people have an acrylic case, and specifically that exact acrylic case. So, how did they solve the cooling problem? In those shots, not everyone has watercooling.. and wouldn't that actually be a little more limited than air cooling anyway, since you'd have to have contact water cooling plates for everything you wanted to cool? I mean, in designing this system, it's going to be serious, so I've tried to think of using serious fans; hard drive cooler/silencer 5/25" enclosure, an all-copper fan/heatsink for the processor, a video card with its own onboard turbo fan thing (some Geforce 8800GST i believe, double-PCI-width high because of the fan alone), really decent power supply. Oh, and negative-pressure cooling with filters on the intake fans. Is that going to be sufficient for an acrylic case, or will I absolutely have to go with watercooling as well?

4. Is it feasible lighting-wise to have all-LED lighting and still get a nice effect with an all-acrylic case, or do LEDs not put out enough light to light the case, to where I'll have to supplement with cathode tubes? I'd really rather have pinpoints of blue light rather than an overall case-filling blue wash effect (like cathode, amirite). What do you think, will it take off^H^H^H^H^H^H^H would only blue LEDs work?

Thanks very much, whoever takes the time to answer me. :D

savedr

Oh, and one more thing. I did find an all-clear power supply here at Xoxide, with BLUE LEDS (awesome), but it's only 500w. That seems a little low for the system I want, what with the vid card I mentioned above, an Intel Quad Core processor, at least 2gb (and more like 4gb) of ram, an SATA hard drive, SATA everything-burner drive, all the fans (I think I'm up to 6 not counting the power supply, and including the HD enclosure), and the lighting, which may or may not include cathode tubes. Is that low, or am I thinking about it wrong?

(I could get a black-walled 750W power supply at Newegg, but do I need it? For looks I'd MUCH rather have the clear blue LED one here.)

GrizzlyBear

you use fans :O
what the hell are you tyring to say? and yes only blue fans would work.

WOW you really are serious.
;)

savedr

Sry. :D I was making a stupid joke. Referencing this picture, which is long-time 4chan trollbait:


And just to mix some jokes up, typed a bunch of ^H after "will it take off" since strikeout text is not supported here. You probably know this, but ^H is what you get when you're using telnet or something to chat. When the other party hits Backspace, it backspaces their previous words on their end, but since every character is transmitted to you, you see what they first typed plus a string of ^H's and what they meant to type.

Hilarity ensued, as people were like:
"Sure, you disgusting pig^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Absolutely, boss." Hehe. I don't know if this ever really happened, but lulz if it did.

savedr

I saw your reply on the other thread, "I need a new case". What if I used positive pressure rather than negative, and really filtered the intake fans? And I mean like, if they'll work, cut-to-fit HEPA filtration? Or used watercooling to supplement, could I cut down on casefans that way?

(I'm scared to death of watercooling because I've never done it before, and I'm also very frightened of leaks developing and me not catching them before they've shorted everything attached to the motherboard, etc.)

Also, what about the power supply? If I'm running the system I've talked about plus lighting, will that cool 500w cut it?

I was thinking about picking a different motherboard than the ASUS P5KC LGA 775 one I'd had picked out, just to get a faster frontside bus or more DDR3 slots. I was looking at it wrong, though, and thought it supported a max bus of 1099, but it's listed as supporting 1333/1099, so that may not be bad, amirite?

Thanks for responding, btw. I'm going to want to pick your brain about the acrylic case you have now; I'm wanting this to be my everyday gaming/gen. purpose system, and it'll suck if it looks dirty all the time inside.

Irish2685

Yeah, just use fans to cool it. I think that should take care of it.

PS. that plane will NOT take off.