jmke

interesting designs, will see if I can get a contact at XClio

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SuAside

that A380BK is one ugly puppy

as for the insides of the wind tunnel thing: almost looks like an exact copy of older Chieftec designs.

jmke

the hard drives seems to be on rails, and does look like a very sturdy steel chassis to work with, but in my experience, airflow from the side panel, doesn't have very large impact on performance; when I added 4x120mm fans to the 830 Evo I recently tested, temps dropped by only few degrees. Adding better/faster in-take /out-take fans front/rear seems to have the most effect, as all the components and heatsinks inside are designed with airflow from front->back in mind

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KTMitch

Alright, thanks. I didn't even think about the direction of air movement.

I was also wondering about the Antec P180(B). http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129017

The reviews are outstanding, but I'd still like another opinion.

Two of my major concerns about any of the cases are cooling efficiency and noise output. Pertaining to those two specific concerns, what other cases would you suggest?

jmke

SilentPCreview did an excellent evaluation of noise vs cooling of the P180 here: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article255-page1.html

I hope to see the Antec P190 at Cebit this year, maybe we can get one for evaluation.

picking one case to be "the choice" is impossible, as it all depends on what you need; the case by itself is dead silent, it's what you put inside which will make the noise, it starts by selecting a cool & quiet PSU, checking that there are no fan's on the mobo chipset, a good CPU cooler, silent HDDs, quiet VGA, etc. The case is only a building block, if you put load gear into the P180, all it's noise preventing features won't help much....

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KTMitch

I've read the P180 review on SPCR, but I find that some of their reviews are overshadowed by their excessive need for a silent case (seeing that is what the website specializes in); irrelevant whether that means sacrificing performance.

While yes, noise (or lack there of) is important to me; the ability to cool a powerful system matters much more. I cannot seem to find any review of the P180 where they have installed a DX10-BASED VGA, a Core 2 Duo CPU, or many other new technologies. Most websites worried about sound install particularly quiet components (for the most part), and websites worried about cooling install cool components. I'd like a review that installs average components, and then perhaps extreme performance components to see how this case does with cooling and noise reduction.

I hadn't heard about the P190 before. Do you think that the changes will make an improvement of the case, or simply create more noise?

While this isn't an idea for a product review, I do have another suggestion. As I read through the reviews (specifically for cases in my instance), I have trouble comparing case to case. If there was a rating system, or a comparison chart that allowed people to compare components beside each other, it would make the decision process much easier. Another way is perhaps a dynamic ranking system, such that each component reviewed is given a rank compared to the other components. So any viewer wondering what case Madshrimp feels is best, could look at the rankings and very easily tell. Now, I have no experience in such an idea. I have no clue to whether it would be even plausible to do. But I do think it would make comparisons between products dramatically easier.

As a question of general interest, what case do you use, jmke?

jmke

when I get more free time, I plan to fill this dbase up to with plenty of details: http://www.madshrimps.be/caselist/

that should help sort through the different cases & options.

the Core 2 system I used for Antec & CM review, I plan to use on all future case reviews to, so performance & noise numbers can be compared between my reviews.

I went from my first case AOPen HQ08 to a Chieftec Maxi Tower, to my now current case since February 2003 http://www.madshrimps.be/vbulletin/s...ead.php?t=1564 - A Coolermaster Midi Tower; I replaced front in-take fans last years with 1x92mm fan, and removed the top fan; silent & cool still; although I doubt it'll fit the Geforce 8800 GTX, haven't tried to to fit it yet, have to say it's a long case, so I might so go without issue

A scoring system for reviews is not very future proof, as time goes by the older case you get lower scores, but going back to each old review and updating the scores would take up too much time in my humble opinion

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KTMitch

I hadn't run across the case comparison list before. Perhaps it would be more evident if you posted a link to it near the case review list. It is a nice resource.

If you’re not ready to shoot me yet, I have some more component suggestions:

The ABIT AW9D-MAX http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813127011. The reviews are very good on this Motherboard. I was wondering specifically about audio quality of the onboard sound processor.

And the Intel BLKD975XBX2KR http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813121060. Both of these boards are very similar. My question being; which would be better worth the price?

Thanks for your quick and descriptive responses. I really do appreciate them.

jmke

Hey KTMitch, my pleasure, one of our reviewers (Thorgal) got a bad axe rev 2, I'll ask him to post some comment on it, he's had the Bad Axe rev1 and few other Core 2 boards to 'play' with.

the reason the caselist link is not public yet, the database is too empty to serve any purpose at the moment and need to do some more coding to streamline everything

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KTMitch

Thanks again. I've been looking for some reviews on the new Bad Axe for a while. The few that I have found weren't very in-depth.

I'll definitely be telling my friends about Madshrimp. My experience (partially because of your wonderful help) is top-notch.

I'll be looking forward to you completing the Case list.