Same, I just want to be able to see the parts I paid 1000s for without also cooking them, or under-voting etc. Just want a clean TG SFF system, with regular boost clocks (Don't need an OC) , nothing fills that market gap atm, except maybe the ghost, but I hate the top hats.
Like a lot of people in this thread I've been looking for this and weighing the sidearm as a potential option was well. I think however, the og sff case, the m1 is getting overlooked. It can provide what you are looking for with some interesting pros/cons vs the sidearm and c4.
It was floated in the m1 v6 revision thread it may come with a full tempered glass panel option (rather than a window within a frame) as well as a grey colour (anodized) which is popular these days. Given where the case market is today and that
@Necere and
@Wahaha360 seem pretty in tune with it, the the full tg panel seems highly likely.
An m1 with a tg panel an a d9l, u9s, atlas or probably several other coolers is not just capable of hitting the boost clocks but even some decent (but not extreme) overclocks. The m1 also carries the advantage of those two fans right below the GPU. While the peak performance from comes from swapping an accelero for your gpu's heatsink (and voiding warranty) one can just remove the shroud and fans from their GPU and get a pretty significant increase in cooling from the fan upgrade (and thus hit those boost clocks on their GPU more often). If you need warranty support just screw the fans/shroud back on. If going this route it is important to either have the fans right against the heatsink or to make a shroud to funnel all the fan's airflow through the heatsink. Some really great results have actually come from running these bottom fans as exhaust and gets excellent airflow going through the case.
While I could be wrong, I imagine the majority of buyers would get much more benefit out the m1's decent cpu cooling and superior GPU cooling than a c4/sidearm with decent GPU cooling and superior cpu cooling.
I'm still somewhat on the fence and awaiting some thermal tests for the sidearm, but at this point I'm leaning toward the m1. I've seen a few threads either discounting the m1's cooling potential or not even considering it, but I think a lot of that comes from a lack of awareness of the different ways in which the m1's airflow can be configured. There's a lot of other pros/cons I've weighed but at this point my post is is pretty long winded, so I'll leave it at this for now and await the
@optimumtech video testing the sidearm.