Let me first say how much I love my NCase M1.
Yes, you can get smaller with Dan's A4 case, which is a wonderful invention.
But the M1 is the smallest you can go without - in my opinion - either compromising cooling and or noise levels, or being forced to use a very short GPU card, to install an AIO in the A4.
In my M1, I haven't even bothered installing an AIO - its perfectly silent and cool with a single 140mm SilentWing 3 on top of a Noctua top-down NH-something 14 cooler. Overclocked GTX 1080, i7-7600k.
It never breaks a sweat, not even when running Star Citizen's un-optimized alpha code - at least since I installed a high efficiency 600W Corsair SFX PSU, which doesn't get hot, unlike the Siverstone model I used before. Every bit of heat you don't create in the first place helps
I can't say cooling was "better" or "more silent" in the much larger Lian Li midi tower I had before this.
So for the same performance, the M1 is not only much smaller and more handy, it also tops Lian Li's case designs in looks - granted it's Lian Li's precision that allows this - but I think you're taking better advantage of their capabilities than they do
If there is ONE thing wrong with the M1, its the vertical ODD slot:
- it promotes ingress of dust through the always open slot
- the slot in the case panel is plain misaligned to my Sony Blu-Ray burner - Discs scrape against the front part of the slot in the aluminum panel, so I've been unable to use it at all...
So hence my question: Does anyone know a solution to this, other than removing the top panel?
I don't really want to go and use a Dremel on it . . .
Yes, you can get smaller with Dan's A4 case, which is a wonderful invention.
But the M1 is the smallest you can go without - in my opinion - either compromising cooling and or noise levels, or being forced to use a very short GPU card, to install an AIO in the A4.
In my M1, I haven't even bothered installing an AIO - its perfectly silent and cool with a single 140mm SilentWing 3 on top of a Noctua top-down NH-something 14 cooler. Overclocked GTX 1080, i7-7600k.
It never breaks a sweat, not even when running Star Citizen's un-optimized alpha code - at least since I installed a high efficiency 600W Corsair SFX PSU, which doesn't get hot, unlike the Siverstone model I used before. Every bit of heat you don't create in the first place helps
I can't say cooling was "better" or "more silent" in the much larger Lian Li midi tower I had before this.
So for the same performance, the M1 is not only much smaller and more handy, it also tops Lian Li's case designs in looks - granted it's Lian Li's precision that allows this - but I think you're taking better advantage of their capabilities than they do
If there is ONE thing wrong with the M1, its the vertical ODD slot:
- it promotes ingress of dust through the always open slot
- the slot in the case panel is plain misaligned to my Sony Blu-Ray burner - Discs scrape against the front part of the slot in the aluminum panel, so I've been unable to use it at all...
So hence my question: Does anyone know a solution to this, other than removing the top panel?
I don't really want to go and use a Dremel on it . . .
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