SPCR

Hi everyone,

I've been using the Antec P180b for over 4 years now It has served me well, but after transitioning to a watercooling setup a few years ago, I've been wanting to get a smaller case.

I have an external watercooling setup for the CPU and GPU. So airflow isn't a priority. I'm looking for a case that has fan intake filters, small dimensions and hard drive dampening. Good structural integrity (case vibration) and HDD vibration dampening are probably the most important factor for me b/c the HDD vibration is probably where most of the system noise will come from. The case will need to accommodate for 2x 3.5" HDDs and 1x SSD.

After looking at the case recommendations section, I think the Fractal Define Mini fits my needs, but I wanted to see if anyone else can suggest me another case to look at as well.

Thanks.

What kind of 3,5" harddrives are they, meaning how badly do they vibrate? The Fractal Design drive bays tend to be okay with 5400 RPM drives to my experience, but if using a 7200 RPM drive you best try some suspension unless it's a drive with exceptionally weak vibrations for being 7200 RPM. If both current drives are bad at vibrations and are mostly doing storage anyway, perhaps changing them out to a single big 5400 RPM drive would be an option. 7200 RPM drives tend to have an annoying pitch to their air borne spinning noise anyway so if your ears percieve it then it's nice to get rid of that too.

mkk,

For my 3.5" drives, I currently have a WD Black 1TB 7200rpm and a WD Green 3TB 5400rpm. Also, I have a 2.5" Crucial M4 128gb SSD. The WD Black 1TB has been quiet enough for me, since it is tucked away in the lower HDD chamber of my Antec P180b.

Since I have a Intel z68 board, if I could partition the SSD to be half windows OS and the other half be a smart cache, then I could just use the SSD and WD Green drive (and lose the WD Black). Does anyone know if smart caching can be used in this fashion? Or does smart cache require a separate physical drive...

I only use the WD Black for my games so I could install the games on the WD Green and use smart cache with it...

Thanks.

So it appears I can have the SSD have the OS and SRT caching, but it's a bit of a pain to have it setup like that.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2172381

If that's the case (pun intended), then I could see myself just going w/ the Silverstone TJ08-e. I can probably figure out some clever way to mount the WD Green 3TB if it rattles too much in the drive cage.

On a side note, the recent SPCR article on the LianLi Q18 made the Q18 sound so tempting as well.