Phrasemaker

I think you do probably need a commander pro to hook everything up so you can configure and control your fan groups. You do have a bit of a mix going on there, the temp probes with the commander pro are a really handy addition. I have one on intake, exhaust, case middle and one in the chamber adjacent to my PSU as it's out of sight in the separate compartment in my 280x case and I want to know how warm it is while looking at the dashboard in iCue. Obviously my GPU, Mobo and other components have their own sensors which display in iCue. It's actually surprising just how much of an improvement can be made to cooling and noise by having fans that are ramped up as temps rise set so they follow a different curve which causes cool air to move differently to how it would if all the fans all follow the same curve. Either way you have a bit of head scratching to come and on the plus side you'll be chuffed when it all works.

Corsair Angie, Thank you very much, I waited almost a year to get my GPU more through choice due to the pricing as I wasn't going to pay the prices which were astronomical. I still paid over the odds, but I had a 1660 super to offload and as I got a really good price on the sale and had had my money's worth out of it I decided to get the 3070ti. I'm a realist, I wanted to be using the new card rather than looking at them on various sites. Like I say, I had good use from the 1660 and figured it owed me nothing. All in all with a bit of pragmatism the new GPU stands me in quite close to the right price :-) And I'm loving it.

Looks great, hope you are enjoying it. :-)

It's taken a while to get the GPU but I now have finally completed my 280X build. Z490 Tuf 3070ti 10700k 2 x Sabrient Rocket M.2 1 X 2TB Barracuda HDD 64GB 3200 corsair RGB 4X16 Hydro 115i RGB 280mm inc 2 x 140 RGB fans Commander pro 2 x Commander core 2 x LL 120 RGB fans 2 x QL RGB fans I've added spacers to raise the glass lid, staggered so it lifts more toward the viewing panel side, I've also now added 10mm rubber feet to the original feet to facilitate more airflow though the base. The GPU fits easily, I went for the Tuf as I have a USB 3 expansion card in the bottom PCI slot and a lot of other cards would have either meant removing it or been way to snug against it. My first build for many years so basically pretty chuffed it all works as should and no hassle now with the RGB no I have Aura and iCue sussed. Mainly posting so others considering this case can see that it accommodates a GPU of this size comfortably without rendering all the other PCI slots useless. See attached image. Thanks for reading.

Have you tried configuring your bios to 1600mhz for the memory? I've only recently got back into PC builds after a 20 year break but both the units I built recently with very up to date mobos required some input in bios from me to get the ram running at my desired speed.

Really useful thread Guys, I was chomping at the bit to buy one. Especially as I need a gadget fix in the absence of a 3080 I can acquire without dropping a wad on a scalper. Having read the above comments, I'll find something else to scratch my itch with.

OK so I measured the depth as per the included image file, I took the measurement with the tape hard up against the mouth of the pci socket as I didn't fancy pushing it onto my mobo being a metal tape and all that. So the measurement is from the insertion point on the board socket to where the inside surface of the glass would usually reside. I taped a piece of stiff white card onto my case exactly in the position where the glass would be, so in actuality a millimeter or so closer to the mobo than inner surface of the glass actually sits taking into account the rubber buffers on the glass fixings. The depth from the card to the insertion face of the pci socket is 154mm. As I said I'm also planning to fit a humungous GPU once the scalpers are done. I am happy I could fit the Strix 3080 in my case and I reckon the MSI will go in too. My current GPU is not far off 140 and I could easily accommodate another centimeter or so for cable bends, probably almost two if put a couple of black plastic washers onto each of the glass fixing screws. It won't come to that because both my options for my next GPU are 140mm according to manufacturers spec. I am sure I can carefully angle the wires from the two or possibly three 8 pin power connectors I will need to plug into the GPU,and if that's a faff I'll get some custom ext cables which may lend themselves to more acute angling of the cable routing as it leaves the plugs and heads back toward the PSU.

I think it will just go in by a whisker, I'm hoping so anyway as I'm putting a similar size card in mine just as soon as I can grab a 3080. My case the 280X is a bit more rammed than the one in your image lol. I did a careful measure just now, it looks promising.

Re my previous reply in the attached image file the HDD lamp is sticking up in front of the Strix logo on the mobo, the cable is visible routing around my GPU. ;-)

I recently did a 280X build, encountered the same HDD led absence. As I fall in the "Today it's more of a fun gimmick for the old guys.." camp lol. I stripped a HDD harness from an old case by just cutting out the two way pug for that lamp with a craft tool. I then got some small diameter chrome effect spiral wrap and wrapped the cable, cut 8mm off the end of a clear Bic pen shaft epoxied the LED into it like a lens and attached it to the hoses for my CPU cooler with it protruding up straight. To be fair it looks pretty good, this was my first build where I would not have had the HDD LED present and as I have a pair of 1TB drives in my build for storage I wanted the LED indicator. Had I only had the pair of M.2's I installed on the Mobo then I wouldn't have bothered. In all honesty with a bit of hindsight I wouldn't have bothered but it's there now and with the lens and wrap it looks way more functional than the actuality lol.

First thing I'd check is if you get notifications that you have plugged in your peripherals into each jack socket. Most audio software accompanying the hardware notifies the user of the jacks being plugged in. It can be a pain sorting these kinds of issues because until you can prove the cabling and socket are functional you can't really be wasting too much time on on chasing software issues. But then if the software is not working correctly it won't detect so it's a bit catch 22. I'd be mightily surprised if the cabling and socket are U/S. Even if the user mistakenly plugs headphones in a mic socket a notification usually pops up, headphones are basically two microphones working in the opposite manner to a mic so generally detectable. I've had audio issues where I get the notification of having plugged something in but no function of that peripheral so weirdness certainly does occur. Personally these days I use a couple of external USB audio interfaces and toggle the windows vol control to select which interface and headphones I want to use. I have one for gaming which has my audio set up for optimal sound for that application and as I have a small recording studio I have the other set up with a very flat, uncoloured sound for mixing recordings accurately before applying various speaker sims to get a flavour of how it might sound on a range of devices. So consequentially I have nothing connected to the audio on my mobo apart from the front panel header for the case and their functionality is of no interest to me.

If you are convinced that the heat shunt facilitated by having a metal basket will tip things to a point where the temps are manageable, perhaps find another way of attaching copper heat shunts to the drives unless you plan on whipping them in and out regularly. Without looking I can't remember how great the surface contact would amount to were the baskets to be metal when the carriages slide into the frame. lol on the other hand I couldn't resist pulling one out. The carriages have runners formed into them to help them slide in and out so metal ones would need to gain greater surface contact to shunt any meaningful amount of heat. Maybe get some copper sheet and fold it in a vice to form your own carriages if your convinced that the heat shunt from metal carriages would make enough difference. As Infin1tum has suggested a cheeky little fan zip tied in would offer a possible solution. Personally I anticipate that the heat shunt option would not yield a sufficient drop in temps for the effort incurred. For the case parts around the drives to be efficient at drawing heat away they'd have to have a natural thermal ability to pull heat once they equalise with the temperature of the drives meaning they'd have to dump heat elsewhere and radiate it efficiently. I don't personally see obvious routes that will be sufficiently cooler to encourage the heat to run anywhere. I'll keep watching to see what you come up with.

Hi, I have the same case but not the same issue with temps. You have not put any additional information to enable others to offer some advice like what else you have in the case. I spent a fair bit of time on my fan set up creating a few custom curves which I can apply to individual fans to allow me to apply each curve to my chosen fan position, I have 2 140's in the roof 2 120's in the front and 2 120's in the floor of the case. I have an 850w PSU sat under the hard drives and have never seen the HDD temps get much over 40C. The case will put air where you create the conditions for it to flow. By controlling air pressure in your case in different areas you control where it pushes or pulls. My Rad is in the roof which is arguably not the best place and I removed the dust filter as it's an exhaust and Im only concerned with sucking dust in and don't care about it being blown out. Under load the fan nearest the front of the case in the roof (exhaust) has a more aggressive curve than the rear fan, as does the front fan in the base (intake) and the upper fan in the front (intake) this causes cool air to create positive pressure in the front half of my case which decreases toward the rear of the case which is also at a positive air pressure albeit a bit lower than the front. That way I get more cool air which has not been heated by my GPU out through the front half of the rad. That additional air pressure at the front half of the case is encouraged upward and rearward by virtue of pressure. Which also means some of the heat form my GPU flows naturally form the rear unblown exhaust in the case as well as out through the slots in the GPU case mounting plate. If too much positive air pressure exists in the GPU area it will vent through the HDD exhaust warming up the drives as it passes through. I have no fan on the side vent adjacent to the PSU and I have my case facing me side on with that side about an inch from the wall so really mine should be a little impeded but it has not been an issue. I'm running an i7 10700K overclocked to 5.1ghz so it's not like I have a particularly cool running CPU installed. My motherboard is a Z490G which is a really snug fit in this case with a 280 rad and fans installed. If I set all my RGB to run on temps, green trough to red I can apply a load to my system and start and stop the load to get an idea how quickly the heat leaves the case and experiment with my fan settings and monitor six or more temperature zones to see where heat is gathering. And how fast it dissipates. My fans are controlled by a commander pro which also has 4 NTC's which are placed in my chosen zones as well as the Mobo temps which also show in icue. Your case is static box incable of controlling heat beyond convection which is where the human comes into play by way of creating conditions in the case with the deployment of additional hardware. Adding any hardware which is not a cooling item will generate heat and then it creates the puzzle of how to manage that heat. I'm sure there are many folk smarter than I on here that if provided with more info about your system could offer you great advice re getting your HDD temps lower. Regards Tim