I need to get a new case to build a spare PC after I gave my old one to my Mum when her PC died. It wasn't worth the effort of moving all the components over to her old case, so I just gave her the whole unit.
I've currently got my PC in a Cooler Master HAF XB EVO case, which I was really excited to find as I'd long thought of building such a case as I figured it can't be good for the motherboard to have the weight of the CPU cooler and GPU hanging off it but after my PSU died recently and I had to dismantle everything to remove it I realised it's not so great! It's pretty bad from a noise point of view too, even with just three Arctic Cooling PWM fans running between 800-1000 RPM at idle/light use (which is about as low as the BIOS will let me go and the CPU temp gets a bit high if I try running them any slower) as the top mesh lets all the fan noise out and there's vents on either side as well. The one on the left might be useful as it allows the graphics card fans to draw in cold air but from a noise POV it'd probably be better to block all those vents and just leave the front vents and fans to provide the intake air.
So I'm looking for a normal tower case again. I'll probably use it for a music composition/production PC, as the noise level is more important for that, and keep my current case/PC as a general purpose/gaming machine where the noise doesn't really matter, or I might end up buying two towers and selling the HAF XB EVO. Either way, I want to keep my options open with the case I'm buying now so I want one I can fit a decent GPU in. I can't imagine I'd need to run more than 2 SSDs and 2 HDDs and I guess I don't really need any external drive bays, as I can either have an optical drive in the other PC or just get a USB one.
I've seen the Deep Silence 3
https://www.quietpc.com/na-ds3 and Deep Silence 1
https://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/AS ... 12-20?th=1 but have read some reports of poor quality on the doors. I'm not keen on top vents on tower cases, as they present too much risk for spilling stuff inside for my liking and vents on the side panels just let noise out so I'd prefer a case without either, otherwise I'd have to block them off myself which just ends up looking messy (and won't do much to block any spillages anyway).
Maybe the Fractal Design Define R6, which can fit a 7cm CPU cooler?
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/fractal ... tx-3x-140mI believe the Deep Silence cases can only take a CPU cooler of up to 6.5" height and a GPU of 13.5" length, whilst for the Fractal Design R6 it's 7.2" and 17.3" respectively (max width for GPUs longer than 11.8" is 6.1" including power connectors) . I'm not sure what height decent CPU coolers are or if there's any modern consumer GPUs that would be too long to fit in either case, unless perhaps they have the power connectors on the end as I know some used to
Having a tempered glass window has the advantage of allowing you to easily confirm that the fans are working and some tasteful lighting can look nice but if it's going to compromise the sound reduction I'd rather have a solid panel. I believe some cases have padding on the inside of the panel, which you obviously can't have with a glass window so I guess it's inevitably going to be inferior on paper, it just depends whether it's noticeable in real terms. With cases with padding on the panel perhaps such they need to be wider to accommodate the GPU but that wouldn't bother me.
Perhaps if I'm not fitting any optical drives I could even lay the tower on it's side, to get the advantage of not having the weight of the CPU cooler and GPU hanging off the motherboard but without the disadvantages of the HAF XB EVO. Then I could even stack two cases on top of each other, or build some shelving to separate them slightly, in which case a glass window would be pointless. That orientation might make it difficult or impossible to use any front-mounted ports but that's not that critical. More important will be whether the front door can still be opened/detached to clean the fans but I guess as long as the case is raised off the floor a bit that should be OK.