ANTEC P140

andaca · Post by **andaca** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 2:44 am

Ok, I donâ€™t know if itâ€™s the right place 2 post this, if its not, sorry,

Anyway, this is my ideal case, a mix between the p180 and p150, nothing ground-breaking just the case I would love to have, if you are listening Antec, just do 1 and ill buy it!

[/img]http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/4379/p140za2.gif[img]

What do you guys think? Any sugestions / ideas?

bring it on, show me your perfect case!

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andaca · Post by **andaca** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 2:46 am

LOL, no image, great!

http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/4379/p140za2.gif

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andaca · Post by **andaca** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 9:49 am

200 Views and no reply

Success

Bobfantastic · Post by **Bobfantastic** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 10:22 am

Can I just ask where you would put a fan controller if you want a quiet machine to play DVDs?
Nice idea, putting the HDDs up top, I'm not so sure about the PSU in the front corner- is the case on stilts to let the warm air out? Also, where is the PSU getting its airflow from? There doesnt seem to be much airflow passing the PCI slots either, I think that for passive graphics it may be a little warm in there...
Overall, it's a nice idea to change the general layout of things- I'll look forward to seeing your prototype!

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 11:42 am

this would be my perfect full atx case.

PSU gets its own fresh air, and is completely isolated (thermally) from the rest of the case.

All the heat producing items, or heat sensitive, are located at the top of the case. Things like optical drives/floppy drive that are rarely "Actively" working and creating heat are at the bottom.

No fans in the front. The further fans are from the seated position, the lower the "percieved" noise level will be. The rear/top 120mm fan could even be placed in the middle attatched to the HD cage. Sort of like the sonata did it, except at the top. This would put the fan in the middle of the case, blowing cool air directly at the CPU/VGA region, and pulling air through the hard drive cage area.

VGA cooling will either be done with a passive heatpipe cooler that moves the heat above the vga card to the airpath region between the hardrive cage and the rear exhaust point, or with a vga cooler like the arctic cooling VGA Silencer style coolers that take the heat and eject it straight out the back of the case.

PSU placement: This will be the first thing people notice and critisize i know it. Ive seen a couple cases that put the PSU in this position, and it still allowed an SLI setup. the PSU comes right up to the bottom of the fourth slot, so while you wouldnt be able to do 2x dual slot sli cards, you could do 2x single slot sli cards. or just 1x dual slot.

Optionals:

A 120mm fan bracket on the top hard drive cage for a push/pull or a secondary location for exhaust fan

Reversable PSU backplate, so that the PSU intake can be made to either suck cool air from the bottom of the case like i drew it, or evacuate hot air from the VGA region.

Elastic Suspension in the top hard drive cage as well as rubber gromets. Just so if you want it to be a bit more secure (like when moving it) you can screw it into the grommets. Just like they did on the P150 case.

heres a pic of the fan in the middle of the case:

heres a link to a pic of a very similar case. i would basically just take this case and stand it on its top, and it would be almost exactly how i drew it:

http://www.abee.co.jp/Product/AS_Enclos ... _space.jpg

One last thing. This case would be very small compared to other full ATX cases, mostly because of the PSU placement, but also because if you note, the drive bays slightly overlap the motherboard region.

Estimated Size: 350x350x200mm or 14x14x8 inches.

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 1:26 pm

heres a BTX version of the same case:

With this variant you could use standard large passive heatsinks on the video cards, since they would be facing up into the cpu region now.

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 1:46 pm

Heres a Micro ATX version of the case:

Estimated Size: 275x325x200mm or 11x13x8 inches

PS: yes i know i have too much time on my hands. mabey i should stop and go play WoW now.

monkiman · Post by **monkiman** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 1:56 pm

Great minds Aris - I was picturing your "perfect ATX case" just yesterday - just didn't get around to asking anyone if they had thought about a mod like this.

So...anyone?

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 2:00 pm

monkiman wrote:Great minds Aris - I was picturing your "perfect ATX case" just yesterday - just didn't get around to asking anyone if they had thought about a mod like this.

So...anyone?

well like i said, its basically already been done. they just need to flip the entire thing upside down and put in some suspension for the hard drive bays.

http://www.abee.co.jp/Product/AS_Enclos ... _space.jpg

Me personally, i would like the micro atx version. It basically just has 1x slot for a video card. Hopefully you can fit that sfx psu down far enough to allow a dual slot video card, so i can put any aftermarket vga cooler on want on it. I'd put a single optical drive in the top external bay, a single hard drive suspended in the bottom internal bay. A ninja heatsink on the cpu. A 120mm fan located in the middle spot like i pictured. Use the Seasonic 80+ sfx PSU. Mod out the 80mm fan for a nexus 80mm, and then use a 120mm nexus for the top chamber.

A 2x fan quiet gamming rig. You wouldnt be able to do SLI, but you could put just about any high end video card you want. One thing you'd have to watch out for though is make sure its deep enough to fit the high end cards. i think they get to be around 9 or 10" long. You could even do a raid0 hard drive setup for even better performance.

qviri · Post by **qviri** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 3:07 pm

My ideal case is much smaller than this...

Using a microATX motherboard, a picoPSU, and a laptop hard drive and a optical drive (5.25" drives are so bulky!), you could get pretty damn small.

I'm thinking of a horizontal box 30x30x15 cm or so. The motherboard slides in and out on some kind of rails. The drives are attached underneath the motherboard (this is nice with laptop components because they're fairly flat). Place the optical drive so that the IDE cable just has to go up a bit, then between the optical and the motherboard, then wrap around the edge of the motherboard and plug into the IDE port... Easy cabling, and the drive can stay in place after motherboard slides out.

For cooling, use a perforated front grill and place one or two 120 mm fans behind it. The fan on the right (looking towards the front of the case) blows air through a CPU tower heatsink of appropriate height. The optional fan on the left blows air past the video card. The back is perforated much like the front.

This design would also mean that some of the air from the fans passes underneath the motherboard (remember that we've raised it to allow for drives). I think either Isaac or Bluefront were experimenting with under-the-motherboard airflow... oh yeah, and so was that failed spec from Intel

The case can be stood on its edge if desired. Since we're using a picoPSU, we don't need to give up any PCI slots (particularly important in microATX if you want a sound card).

Maybe consider a slimmer version of the case, at 10 cm or so, using 80 mm fans and low-profile PCI cards. This, however, could be tricky given the height of the solid I/O plate on your average motherboard. Of course, this could be done with a custom grill I/O plate, but then you run into motherboards having odd ports placement.

I think that if a case manufacturer were to sell such a case with the picoPSU (possibly beefed up to make sure it can pass along ~150 watts on the 12 volt rail safely), an appropriate optical drive, and quiet fans, it could achieve moderate success. I would certainly buy it if it looked nice. As it probably won't happen, I've been thinking of making one for myself. I do have access to a machine shop at the university and I'm in the process of acquiring some skills in the said shop. We'll see...

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 3:26 pm

i just measured it. If you kept the entire SFX psu inside the constraints of the enclosure, it would block 3 of the 4 expansion slots. It actually would be just below the 3rd slot, but just barely, not enough room to actually plug anything into that 3rd slot. Leaving just 1 for a single slot video solution. However ,looking at the deminsions of the seasonic sfx psu, the fan sticks up a bit from the rest of the casing. I could lower that extruded portion for the fan down below the bottom panel of the case. it would save me about a half inch. It would probably "Technically" give me just enough space for that third spot, but more importantly, it would definately give me enough room for a single video card with any aftermarket VGA cooler i want for it. Though i do worry about clearence between the floor and the fan on the PSU. Placing the case on carpet would definately be a bad idea, though with the placment of the optical drives, id think it be sitting on a table anyhow.

Anyone know the minimum "safe" distance between a surface and a fan sucking air from that surface into somthing?

i checked around on some standard small micro ATX cases. the shortest depth i found, also the most common depth, was 13.8". So i would probably go with this depth. Also the width was right around the 8" mark like i estimated. some slightly wider, some slightly thinner, but most were within a quarter inch.

Estimated Size: 325x275x200 or 13x11x8 inches

EDIT: i just thought about somthin. Most cases have a bezel, and include the measurements to include them. I wouldnt want any fancy bezel. So that would lower the depth to around 13 inches.

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 3:53 pm

Qviri: theirs a case out now that will do almost exactly what you want. Though you'd have to use a mini-itx motherboard instead of a micro-atx

http://www.logicsupply.com/product_info ... cts_id/141

ive got one with a quiet undervolted 80mm fan on the front of it just below the slimline optical drive. It blows air directly over the cpu/vga/nb, and also blows air under the motherboard.

size is 200x200x100mm or 8x8x4 inches

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 3:55 pm

Now that i think about it. I'm starting to give up alot of things just to shave off 3 inches from the hight/depth to go from atx to matx.

I change my mind, id rather have the ATX variant. its not that much bigger, and gives you 4 slots for expansion. Plenty of room for video and audio, or an sli setup. Its still alot smaller than typical ATX cases out now.

qviri · Post by **qviri** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 4:04 pm

Aris wrote:Qviri: theirs a case out now that will do almost exactly what you want. Though you'd have to use a mini-itx motherboard instead of a micro-atx

http://www.logicsupply.com/product_info ... cts_id/141

Thanks, but the trade-off is unacceptable. mini-ITX is far too expensive compared to microATX. I am a student, I cannot afford $150 cases, let alone sufficiently fast mini-ITX boards.

edit: come to think of it, a picoPSU with a brick would be a stretch as well. Damn. Ah well, dreams are much more fun than realising them anyway.

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 4:09 pm

aye, it was an expensive build.

$150 for case
$50 for new 200w 12v-atx dc/dc converter
$40 for 220w external brick psu
$10 for items needed to convert brick psu to work with dc/dc converter
$350 for pentium M mini-itx board with pci-express 16x
$50 for flexible pcie 16x cable (because they used a non standard riser length)

so $650 just for the motherboard and case/psu. that doesnt include the drill and hole saw needed to cut a 3" hole in the front of it for the fan.

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 4:14 pm

I'm actually very tempted to build the ATX variant now myself.

i just checked a website for the cost of 1.0mm cold rolled steel sheets (about 20ga thickness), along with some steel angle lengths for structual support. With shipping it was like $90

That would only cover the cost of the box itself though, not materials to make the drive bays. I was thinking of mabey gutting drive bays from another steel case to make it work.

Edit:

mabey i could just do like the early lian li cases did. Just make a flat set of panels running down the front of the case, and drill holes in it. Would probably be the easiest way to do them myself.

Edit:

double checked length of atx board. only 12". i could probably get away with a 14x14x8 inch chassis. so 350x350x200mm

Edit:

was reading the nsk3300 review. its almost exactly the same size as the full atx version that i want to buld. All is really different is id put the psu on the bottom of the case along with the external bays instead of at the top.

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 5:10 pm

came up with an idea to make the micro atx version work. had to move the powersupply. It looks alot like the original posters version, except with a micro atx board instead of a full atx.

Estimated Size: 275x300x200mm or 11x12x8 inches (HxDxW)

Rory Buszka · Post by **Rory Buszka** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 2:24 pm

Placing the 120mm intake fan behind the 5.25" bays (with suspension provisions for the 3.5" drives) would be a great way to reduce noise, since noise from the intake side of the fan could be absorbed by a thin layer of acoustic foam around the inside of the drive cage. And that noise would not have such an easy direct path of exit to begin with, even before modding with foam.

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 6:43 pm

andaca wrote:LOL, no image, great!

http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/4379/p140za2.gif

[/url]

Hey, i just ran across a case that fits your exact model.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811200031

Granted it doesnt have suspension built in, but you could rig it up yourself in the top 2x 5.25" bays. Put the single optical drive in the bottom external 5.25" bay.

You'd have to mod some sort of mesh/screen to go in from of the top 2 5.25" bays to allow air to flow over the HD's and out the rear 120mm fan.

It would take a bit of modding, but at least its got the same basic structure your lookin for.

I might actually pick one of these up. Id probably put some sheet metal over the top of the side panels to close up all the vent holes. Id also take the front bezel off and put up another piece of sheet metal on the front, and make cutouts and vents for the top hard drive bays as well as the PSU intake in the bottom. repaint all the panels black.

replacing the front plastic bezel with a piece of sheet metal will probably take about an inch off the total depth.

andaca · Post by **andaca** » Sun Aug 27, 2006 2:55 am

thats my case!

yes, i must buy 1 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the psu cage even has some sort of suspension!

i dont like the sidepanel.... i guess the psu has 2 breath