Atx cabinet

[richard]

This is my first post in this forum. How do you deal with moisture build-up? I live in a humid place and when the AC is on, I fear there might be condensation inside the case. Do I need to worry about that? Or does the heat inside the case take care of that?

YES you need to worry about condensation... I have had problems very often with moisture on the computer specially during the first week of heavy rains here in Mumbai - this happens nearly every year and it did so even this year.

I have an answer to this problem - keep the computer running when you feel the humidity levels around the computer is high. The condensation is formed when the AC is switched off and doors and windows are opened - so about half an hour before switching off the AC I start the computer and run NAV or Prime to heat up the computer. I let the computer run for at least an hour after the doors and windows are opened.

I must mention I have a Hygrometer and a Thermometer mounted on the wall next to my computer case. The AC actually drops the humidity levels down to about 50% in my room and when the doors and windows are opened it may go as high as 85%

[Pagladashu]

Hi Richard! this morning I tried to open the side panel behind the motherboard. Could not budge it after removing the thumb screws. Looks like it is shouldered somewhere!! Could not use much force either.... dont want to dislodge my mobo.

I think I'll now wait for the Antec/CM cases to arrive in Delhi then shift my computer to the new case.

Unfortunately, the ITdepot guy says that Antec 1080 power supply does not have SATA connector!! Do you guys think I should go for an SMPS which does not have a SATA connector?

[richard]

Hi Richard! this morning I tried to open the side panel behind the motherboard. Could not budge it after removing the thumb screws. Looks like it is shouldered somewhere!! Could not use much force either.... dont want to dislodge my mobo.

I think I'll now wait for the Antec/CM cases to arrive in Delhi then shift my computer to the new case.

Unfortunately, the ITdepot guy says that Antec 1080 power supply does not have SATA connector!! Do you guys think I should go for an SMPS which does not have a SATA connector?

Hmmm... I have never seen a side panel which does not have a way to remove it unless it is riveted to the case. If it is welded or soldered than that SUX.

Even tho your right side panel does not open you can still clean up the cabling by using the spiral stuff. Did you find this in Delhi ? I did my clean up of the cabling without opening the right side panel.

If you look at the Antec cases check out the 3700 series. There is the 3700AMB and 3700BQE. The AMB HDD cage is in regular way and the BQE has HDD drive cage sideways like mine. BQE = Black Quite Edition. The AMB has HDD drive bay for 5x3.5" and the BQE for 4x3.5" I wiuld take the AMB for better HDD cooling and also the extra drive slot. These cases are a little cheaper then the 1000 and 1080 cases.

As for the Cooler Master - this one looks very nice but the air cooling is terrible. The air inlet for the fan is to small and needs to be worked on.

[richard]

Unfortunately, the ITdepot guy says that Antec 1080 power supply does not have SATA connector!! Do you guys think I should go for an SMPS which does not have a SATA connector?

Are you aware that at the "other" forum most of the guys dont like using the SATA power connectors - they prefer using Molex connectors if the drive has that socket. Seagate SATA drives dont seem to have Molex power connectors.

Today I picked up an APC Backups 800 RS UPS - NICE. cost 5.5K I phoned APC to enquire where I could get this UPS and the fantastic service they gave me - UNBELIEVABLE. The way they were treating my enquiry you would think I was ordering 1000 units. Nice to see at least some people in the computer hardware industry know how to treat clients. I am so used to calling hardware dealers and get a pan chewing guy answering my call with loud "KAHUN" ?

[richard]

it isnt half as neat as what you have done ...case is just a bit too small for all the wires[/color][/font]

by the way do you have the link to the review of the zalman look alike cooler i mentioned about earlier ? i dont even know the brand name or would have googled it

anyway whats wrong with using sata power connectors ? using molex instead sounds a bit like bull

Lets see the case.... OK !!! I dont think size of case matters so much - see the picture of that FANTASTIC wiring I attached above - that case is small.

The copy of the Zalman is the Cooltek CT8C-48 CU - do a Google search for it. Found one link - its in German - babel fish the page.

Cooltek HSF

These guys at the other forum mentioned that the SATA connectors were not getting firm fits on the drives and come loose with a slight touch to the cables - also SATA connectors data and power are quite flimsy - they break very easily. I myself use the SATA connectors from the Antec PSU without any problems tho my SATA DATA cables have become quite loose.... I think I could BLOW them off with one strong PUFF.

[richard]

heres a pic , its no where near what you have done but its neater than it was yesterday since i had had discarded the old antec cables and then used flat cables and the other wiring was also unarranged and hanging all over the case

i think i need to get some sleeving material for the wires coming out of the psu or at least for the cd drive power connectors

OK here are a few suggestions...

The fan below the PSU - turn it around (the wire for which I have marked with 2 X's) so the wire comes out of the fan from the top near the mother board then follow the red color path and tie it on the spots marked with X's. One of the spots to Tie it is to the PSU's sleeved power cable - gently. This would avoid having this wire going right across the MoBo.

What is the wire I have marked with the red question mark ?

Take both the SATA cables and make them parallel to each other and push them below the lowest drive - let only a small section of the SATA cables come out from below the drive and go up to the SATA connectors on the drives - pull out just enough to reach the drives connectors. This should make them look neater.

I would suggest to use the Antec silver Cobra cable to tie up birthday presents - instead of clearing up the case they add more clutter. Instead take a stiff ATA100 cable and bend/mould them around the edge of the case - these ATA100 cables can be made so unobtrosive that they seem not to be there at all... look for my ATA100 cable for my CD Writers !! There is one cable - can you see it ? Now imagine if I had my Cobra in there - disaster !!! Can you see my floppy cable ?? Its invisible because I have cut this cable into strips of 8 wires each and tied them and then pushed this cable under the ATA100 cable.

If you dont find sleeving material then just twist the wires for the time being - take care not to use too much force to avoid damaging any cable.

[bottle]

OK here are a few suggestions...

The fan below the PSU - turn it around (the wire for which I have marked with 2 X's) so the wire comes out of the fan from the top near the mother board then follow the red color path and tie it on the spots marked with X's. One of the spots to Tie it is to the PSU's sleeved power cable - gently. This would avoid having this wire going right across the MoBo.

that fan is the one which came with the case and it is connected to the motherboards 3 pn connector. this fans wire is so darned short that i had to leave it all stretched out like that i have an antec 80 mm blue led fan (with sleeved connector) might go for that i guess, only reason i havent done it till now was that it was a bit too loud

What is the wire I have marked with the red question mark ?

lol thats the fan controller for the northbridge fan+hs combo got it from a friend , not really effective sadly and lots of wire clutter.. even the small bunch of wires under the zalman sink is from that!

Take both the SATA cables and make them parallel to each other and push them below the lowest drive - let only a small section of the SATA cables come out from below the drive and go up to the SATA connectors on the drives - pull out just enough to reach the drives connectors. This should make them look neater.

the sata wires arent flexible around the connectors area which is why they stick out so.. they bend only after 2-3 cms after the connector. havent been able to anything about that

I would suggest to use the Antec silver Cobra cable to tie up birthday presents - instead of clearing up the case they add more clutter. Instead take a stiff ATA100 cable and bend/mould them around the edge of the case - these ATA100 cables can be made so unobtrosive that they seem not to be there at all... look for my ATA100 cable for my CD Writers !! There is one cable - can you see it ? Now imagine if I had my Cobra in there - disaster !!! Can you see my floppy cable ?? Its invisible because I have cut this cable into strips of 8 wires each and tied them and then pushed this cable under the ATA100 cable.

i found the flat cables a bit short and tough to route which is why i went for rounded , which are stiff at the end with the 2 connectors close to each other . i see your point though , havent thought about cutting the flat ide cables.. am worried about cutting the wrong thing

If you dont find sleeving material then just twist the wires for the time being - take care not to use too much force to avoid damaging any cable.

thanks a lot , you have given a lot of good tips.. consider writnig a cable management guide dood

I am scared to ask this question - what type of temperatures do you get for the Raptors ? If they are RAIDed then I dont think the drive temp programs will be able to pick up their temps. Must be very hot in that drive cage. I hope you have a good fan cooling the HDD's.

no idea mate since as you say they are raided and temp monitoring isnt supported while they are raided. but they arent really all that hot when i touch them , just a tad warmer that my seagate and wd pata drives. i have 2 80 mm blowing full blast over them which i guess should help

edit: cant rep you for the help either , says i have to spread some before awarding you again.. another time i guess

[richard]

m31: SLK3700-BQE costs 4500/- including Antec Smart Power 350 power supply. the PSU doesn't have dedicated output circuitry.
http://www.antec.com/specs/sl350_spe.html
if you don't want the PSU you can save 1000/- bucks.

I never enquired the price of the 3700BQE case - but at 3500/- (without power supply) it is really a good buy. I wish I had seen this case when I bought my P160 - I am sure I would have bought the 3700BQE as it is less than half the price of the one I got. At The SilentPCReview site they rate this case very highly - check out their review on these cases - SPCR's reviews are very good - worth a read.

3700AMB Review

3700BQE Review

EDIT: I forgot to mention that these 2 cases have holes for 2 120mm fans !!!

[Pagladashu]

[the case comes with a antec smartpower 350w smps , isnt that what you are using now
http://www.theitdepot.com/pro_detail...LK3700BQE.html

Hi Bottle, yes that is the power supply I am using now.
(Edit: well, not exactly, the silentpcreview site which Richard suggested, says: With the SmartPower 350S PSU, Antec has followed the pattern they started with the Sonata's "TruePower 380S" by taking the regular SmartPower 350, removing the lower 92mm fan completely, redesigning the PSU circutry for lower noise and appending the model number with an "S" (for silent??).

I use the regular one.

But my case is quite small and it is getting cramped. So I want to get a better case. The price of SLK3700 series is looking attractive. So might go for it. I also plan to build an AMD based machine in a few months time. I can use the extra SMPS there.

@ Richard, as always, very useful info from you. Thanks!!
Yes, I'll post pics once the housecleaning is done.

YOU GUYS HAVE BEEN WONDERFUL

[richard]

using a coolermaster wavemaster now, would say that there are any improvements... actually i think its a step backward changed my case since the side panel of my amb got badly dented during some repair work at my house

When I picked up my Antec P160 I was also looking at the wavemaster - the only thing I had against the wavemaster were the lack of proper cooling in that case. I could never live with 2 80mm fans and I think there is one more optional on top. I would have cut up the wavemaster to have many more fans and probably made a mess of its excellent finsh.

Could not theitdepot give you a side panel for the 3700AMB ?

Would I would have liked to get is the CoolerMaster Stacker - in my books this is one of the BEST cases - look at the number of drive bays !!!

[abhay]

Now i wonder how many optical or HDD drives do you need and even if you can afford that many which motherboard supports that many... I am not saying that Stacker is a bad case but if you like it for the number of bays than not worth eyeing...

i don't know much about RAID but can't you use many hard drives in RAID form? for that you will need a stacker like that. isn't it?
btw such cases should be used if you are running servers. i have hardly seen anyone running more than 4 HDDs (2 drives in 2 RAID)

[richard]

Now i wonder how many optical or HDD drives do you need and even if you can afford that many which motherboard supports that many... I am not saying that Stacker is a bad case but if you like it for the number of bays than not worth eyeing...

I have 6 optical drives and 6 HDD's - I would not use all of these at the same time - but I like the looks and the space inside the Stacker and that works for me. My ASUS P4C800ED MoBo supports 10 drives and I have a Promise controller which makes a total of 14 drives if I wanted to have so many running at the same time.

[richard]

i don't know much about RAID but can't you use many hard drives in RAID form? for that you will need a stacker like that. isn't it?
btw such cases should be used if you are running servers. i have hardly seen anyone running more than 4 HDDs (2 drives in 2 RAID)

I have 4 HDD's running most of the time and occassionally I attach a fifth drive when I am working on someones drive. I ran RAID 0 with my 2 Maxtor 120gb SATA drives but hardly saw any difference in running daily stuff - I dont play games - so after a week I broke the RAID. Man, I drool over the LOOKS of the Stacker - more beautiful in my eyes than Miss A Rai.

[abhay]

You know I sometimes wonder that we are so near to the case mecca i.e. Taiwan and still we don't get those companies interested in us. Almost 80-85% of cases reviewed on big hardware sites (and recommended) are from a company with its head office in Taiwan but we are still stuck with pathetic looking cases with nil cooling capacities.
This really baffles me...what do we have to do so that these companies come to India. Can you people think of anything behind this global conspiracy...

PS: ok the bit about conspiracy was a bit of joke

[cngn]

I bought myself a CM Stacker and it's done wonders in terms of cooling, my CPU used to run at about 51 C in an Antec PlusView 1000AMG, once I transferred the same config to the Stacker it dropped to 38 C.

Plus the Stacker has much more Cooling capacity in terms of Fans you can mount, shucks, in fact it's so massive you can add an entire Water / Vapour cooling kit inside it comfortably, I had to settle with adding an additional SMPS to handle the 6 HDDs I run on it.

The good thing is the 120mm intake fans you can mount infront of the HDD, sucking in air across them. Even my disks now run much cooler, than before. Also you can buy the Blower, that comes optionally for a Stacker which cools the entire Mobo, alongwith the RAM.

I'll be updating my website this week(end), you guys can take a look at rig once it's complete...(Still installing a CM Hyper 6 Cooler over the CPU).

You know I sometimes wonder that we are so near to the case mecca i.e. Taiwan and still we don't get those companies interested in us. Almost 80-85% of cases reviewed on big hardware sites (and recommended) are from a company with its head office in Taiwan but we are still stuck with pathetic looking cases with nil cooling capacities.
This really baffles me...what do we have to do so that these companies come to India. Can you people think of anything behind this global conspiracy...

PS: ok the bit about conspiracy was a bit of joke

The problem is the Govt. and it's import policies, otherwise these cases wouldn't have a problem entering India. Most of these companies would love to make more money. It's just that the red-tape and high import duties, don't make it feasible for them to sell competetively in India, and they won't want to waste time, pushing paper between the various Govt. agencies. I guess they'd prefer to push their products in more open markets.