Case Recommendations?

Hi,

 

I have a Carbide Air 540 at the moment. However, I'm trying to run a dual push pull setup with a 360mm radiator on the front and a 280mm (not 240mm) radiator on the top.

 

This case clearly lacks the amount of real estate required to do so. So I was hunting around for case recommendations but I haven't been able to find any.

 

I plan on running a maximum of 4 disks (2SSD, 2HDD) and plan to add 2x Vega GPUs when they are around.

 

Following features are a must:

1. Clean looks. I very much liked the look of Air 540 or Enthoo but something overly gaudy is a no

2. Mount points for pump + reservoir

 

A couple of good to have features would be:

1. Removable motherboard tray.

2. Tempered side panel on a single side

3. Perferred Mid ATX as opposed to full tower

 

Any recommendations would be very much appreciated!

 

Radiator specs:

360GTS XFlow - 30mm

280GST XFlow - 30mm

Hi Nick

 

The Air 740 should work fine for fitting the components you mentioned. However, it doesn't have the "good to have" features. Fitting a 240mm and 360mm radiator in one case will usually call for a full tower.

 

 

So a 740 can do both the radiators in a push pull config?

Push-pull in the top always has some motherboard dependencies. Usually you are OK with a 240, which should fall inside the typical VRM heatsink and top ATX plug vertical line. There is a lot of room down to the memory modules, so RAM height should not an issue.

 

Plenty of room in the front for the 360 push-pull, but ultimately GPU length may be a restriction. Since that value is not known, you need to use the max 330mm length and start deducting 50mm for two fans + your radiator thickness. You have not specified that for either cooler and that can range from 30-60mm. Bottom fans may need to be sacrficed (or at least one of them) for front 360-push-pull or reservoir placement.

 

Still some room on the rear side for a skinny/tall reservoir, but push-pull on the front will take out the front position. Obvious space in the cold half of the case and HDD brackets and such can be retro-fitted for other purposes. That is the obvious place for the mount, but it will not be visible if that matters.

 

Not sure you will ever find all of your criteria in a "mid-size" without going to a custom modular case. The 740 is not gigantic, but you don't really put it under a desk either.

 

This was a while back and not exactly at your specs, but it may give you an idea of what there is to work with.

 

http://www.corsair.com/en-us/landing/single?id=brute-force

Hi c-attack

 

Small correction, I have a 280mm up top. I've added the radiator specs, both are 30mm rads. The fans are 25mm each.

 

So 85mm clearance on both sides with the top being at least 115mm wide for enough spacing b/w both push pull setups

I would highly recommend the AIR 740, and then add in a third radiator. Check out the build I did for the case debut. No need to do push/pull config on the top if you have a third radiator in pull config!

Small correction, I have a 280mm up top. I've added the radiator specs, both are 30mm rads. The fans are 25mm each.

 

You are going to have a hard time finding a case that can handle push-pull 280mm when above the motherboard VRM/ATX plug. It's a no go on the 740, with nearly every motherboard presenting a physical obstacle for the second set of fans. On the other hand, I am hard pressed to think of a reason why you need them. 2x1000 rpm vs 4x750 seems a bit trivial. As you can probably tell from the custom rig shots, another 25mm down from the top will complicate several other intersections with the front and rear radiator fan placements. With a 280mm on top, the intersection with a front 360 push-pull comes into play as well. I don't think you need push-pull for any of this, but if you have your heart set on it you are going to have to sacrifice some other aspect. That would almost certainly be the mid-size requirement and probably require jumping into a different price category.

Can sacrifice on the mid size requirement and more than happy to jump to a diff price category. What I don't want though is extrace space in say the bottom for a rad because now the cabinet is too huge to hold anything less

Like I was sayin', the AIR 740 is more than enough for a 130W CPU and a pair of 1080 Tis when you use 3x radiators for heat dissipation. Having two 280mm radiators to cool each card is great and a single 360mm radiator to cool the CPU is a bit overkill. Definitely more than capable in single sided fan configuration.