Considering buying one of these padded/silenced cases, although I'm in two minds about the resurgence of the "case with doors" (they remind me of a certain Thermaltake monstrosity from yonks ago). One concern I have is thermal performance. I know I can scour the web for reviews and benchmarks, but my concern is more regarding the cases in general than any specific example. Do these cases have issues with cooling, or dust accumulation on the filters/intakes? Logically they can't cool as well as a more open case due to airflow restrictions, but I'd be interested to know if I'm just being OCD or if it makes any noticeable difference.
I'll (eventually) be running a 4770K @ stock, HD7850, LSI 9260-4i with two 3TB HDDs in RAID1, plus an SSD
I have an Fractal Design R3, with an AMD Phenom 2 X6, Using a BeQuiet Top Flow cooler, Lowest temp recorded since last boot was 14c, highest of 34c (100% Load) Currently on idle was 17c, Fans wise, 2 In, 1 exhaust rear, 1 exhaust roof. No GPU as it's a server, but all HDD cages occupied and all running, so the two intakes are blowing in warm air to start. Hope that helps. Sam
My room is very hot right now, and while gaming my gpu hits 85 degrees but fan is only running at 40%, while cpu is around 45-50. When it isn't stupidly hot and more normal temperatures, gpu is much cooler around 65 running at 30% fan, and cpu is around 35-40 while gaming. I've got one intake, and using a push/pull h80 as my exhaust all in a fractal r3. It's much quieter than any other computer in my house, but I can't compare it to any other mid range cases. I've also upgraded from the stock fractal fans (which are quiet but aren't the strongest to some noctua's) and I've been very happy with my case. Also, the ambient in my room is probably something like 27-28 degrees. My mom only sets the house to 26 and being at the very top of the house its quite a bit warmer.
I had an R4 for a year or so and ran an OCd 2600k and at least one 7970 in it, with decent inflow and outflow fans. I never, ever had an issue with temps, but it WAS nice and quiet!
R4 user here and it is a great case. Maybe not the last work in build quality but it has a great layout and airflow.
Dust accumulation usually depends on the balance between intake and exhaust airflow. In my experience, if the balance leans towards exhaust (creating a potential negative pressure), you'll see more dust build up than a positive pressure setup which has more fans blowing into the case. It seems somewhat counter intuitive, I know, but I've seen this many times.
Thanks for your input, +rep to all Ironically enough I'm leaning very strongly towards the Silverstone FT03 at the moment as footprint is at a premium
I also forgot to mention I had all the extra vents closed, I dust the front filter weekly and the power supply / bottom vent I only dust every few months. I usually only open the case to dust inside every 3-4 months and there isn't very much dust inside, which is great.
My uncle runs this type of case, nzxt, although I can't remember the exact model. He does see heightened hard drive temps mainly (130f) Everything else is manageable.
