I was tipped off to this in the small ATX Ncase thread and decided to take the plunge and see what kind of sacrifices I need to make when moving into a similarly small case if Ncase does produce an ATX version.
I've rebuilt the insides of this case 3 or 4 times in this thread, I'll post a current pic here, but then everything that follows is from my first post:
Current build:
Original build:
Room for two 120mm fans up top, the case ships with brackets here for offset mounting a 240mm radiator, but I'm obviously not using it for this build.
All of the motherboard headers clear the fans just fine, I managed to run the USB3 front panel cord between the fans since they aren't square:
I found a little metal drive cage for my 2.5in SSDs, as there were only two mounting slots for 2.5in drives on the back and I haven't yet made a bracket to adapt this to the 3.5in drive mount on the top left of the case:
Everything fit pretty well, nothing too difficult about cable routing/etc. I was happy I was using a modular PSU and that there was room in front of the PSU to tuck all the cables.
Rear cable management is as expected, but visible due to the glass:
I could go crazy with custom-length cabling and clean it up a tad, but I don't think it's worth it. I'll probably wrap this rear panel with some vinyl or something at some point down the line, maybe order a solid metal one from Raijintek and save this as a spare should the front glass ever break.
Thermals are decent, card clocks all the way up and holds at 80C, CPU peaks around 65C. I did swap radiator fans to the PWM one that came with my NZXT radiator, and swapped it to pull through the radiator exhausting out just to make the fan noise a tad quieter.
As-is, the system is inaudible under normal use and takes ~6-7min to return to silent after it heatsoaks during gaming/etc.
Full album here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/acquacow/albums/72157689087933424
-- Dave
I've rebuilt the insides of this case 3 or 4 times in this thread, I'll post a current pic here, but then everything that follows is from my first post:
Current build:
Original build:
Room for two 120mm fans up top, the case ships with brackets here for offset mounting a 240mm radiator, but I'm obviously not using it for this build.
All of the motherboard headers clear the fans just fine, I managed to run the USB3 front panel cord between the fans since they aren't square:
I found a little metal drive cage for my 2.5in SSDs, as there were only two mounting slots for 2.5in drives on the back and I haven't yet made a bracket to adapt this to the 3.5in drive mount on the top left of the case:
Everything fit pretty well, nothing too difficult about cable routing/etc. I was happy I was using a modular PSU and that there was room in front of the PSU to tuck all the cables.
Rear cable management is as expected, but visible due to the glass:
I could go crazy with custom-length cabling and clean it up a tad, but I don't think it's worth it. I'll probably wrap this rear panel with some vinyl or something at some point down the line, maybe order a solid metal one from Raijintek and save this as a spare should the front glass ever break.
Thermals are decent, card clocks all the way up and holds at 80C, CPU peaks around 65C. I did swap radiator fans to the PWM one that came with my NZXT radiator, and swapped it to pull through the radiator exhausting out just to make the fan noise a tad quieter.
As-is, the system is inaudible under normal use and takes ~6-7min to return to silent after it heatsoaks during gaming/etc.
Full album here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/acquacow/albums/72157689087933424
-- Dave
Last edited: