Corsair 600t upgrade

Show off your quiet rig.

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protellect
Posts: 312
Joined: Tue Jul 24, 2007 3:57 pm
Location: Minnesota

Corsair 600t upgrade

Post by protellect » Mon Sep 27, 2010 4:46 am

I've "upgraded" my gaming computer from a lightly modified Antec P180 [some behind the tray cabling] to a Corsair 600t... I'm overall pleased, but I'd share a couple things with yall that you would only get if you did it yourself

Parts list :

Corsair HX750
ASUS Maximus Formula motherboard
Intel i7 875k + Corsair H50
4x4GB DDR3 Gskill
ATI HD5850
Gigabyte iRAM
2x 300GB Velociraptors R0
1x Corsair C300 128GB [100GB formatted]

[Removed from build after]
4x 1TB WD Black FAEL [lots of noise in those trays]
ASUS 6G/USB3 card which didn't work with the C300 plugged into it


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So, what's good about it?

- Putting it together was unbelievably pleasant. It's never been so enjoyable, and I've done dozens of Antec P180, Solo, Sonata, etc for work.
- Love super-easy slide in hard drive trays, the overall space, and the behind-the-tray cabling is super nice.
- HDD bays are very nice to get stuff in and out, have a minimal amount of rubber for vibration absorption.
- 5.25" bay - snap and you're done, no screws.
- Room for any power supply you desire.
- Great looking inside and out
- Easy access doors that feel good on both sides
- Decent dust filters, they "soft snap" into the case, so they are very easy to remove/clean.
- Great USB/1394/USB3/Audio plugs on top of the case + fan controller on top [no RPM, but a dial that goes up and down]

What's so-so
- Case is made to sit on the floor, not on your desk. Power buttons and usb/audio/fw are all on top.
- To some, the lights on the fans; top and front.
- Bigger than P180; taller and wider. And much lighter. And those could all be pro's or con's to each individual.
- Built in Fan controller; motherboard one or Zalman FC works better, but this one isn't bad.

And what's bad?
- Thin case material. Doesn't soak up noise or vibration like P180 doors do. Fair amount of plastic. Metal feels like .8mm steel.

- HDD Mounts aren't as quiet as Antec P180, either due to dampening or vibration absorption. They have much less rubber grommet material than P180 or other Antec Cases. 4 1TB HDD created a significant amount of noise and it was deemed unacceptable to me, where as the P180 with the door closed would soak up the noise
- 240mm fans are kinda meh. 800 RPM Yate Loon's were quieter. Probably going to replace the top 240mm with 2x120 mm
- Antec had better dust filters.
- Lack of any sort of cooling for GPU. Antec had it so you could have a 120mm blowing over your GPU.

Overall recommendation: Far from the quietest case, but as far as easy to build, work in and maintain, nothing beats it. Some other minor cons, and pretty much all of it has to do with noise.

Hope you all found it informative, feel free to PM or post any questions!

EDIT: oh and the obligitory titanic epeen win7 scores

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Last edited by protellect on Mon Sep 27, 2010 7:21 pm, edited 4 times in total.

MikeC
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Post by MikeC » Mon Sep 27, 2010 5:14 am

thanks for a great succinct review. Tells me more than so-called prof. reviews on many tech sites! 8)

bozar
Posts: 305
Joined: Thu Aug 14, 2008 10:49 pm
Location: Sweden

Post by bozar » Mon Sep 27, 2010 11:10 am

Nice review but there's one thing I don't get, you like the HDD bays because they are easy to use and use less material compared to P18X but at the same time you do prefer P18X rubber gromets? Please explain.

Acoustically, this case seem inferior compared to P183 which is a great case even by todays standards. I really dislike the turned HDD cage, not any good for either airflow or elastic suspension. Sure, it saves space and helps a bit when it comes to routing cables but at that cost?

SPCR should review a nice new full tower ATX case soon =).

protellect
Posts: 312
Joined: Tue Jul 24, 2007 3:57 pm
Location: Minnesota

Post by protellect » Mon Sep 27, 2010 3:44 pm

Yes, I liked how easy it was to put the hard drives in; screw less design, you see. However once I turned on all 4 1TB blacks, the vibration dampening was inferior to the white-rubber grommets on the P180.

It felt like the HDD's were flush against the plastic base of the supplied trays, so vibration can transmit to the plastic, instead of being suspended by grommets. Suspension should be possible and would go a long way to fixing that, but I decided to can my 4x1TB's in my gaming computer.

With the the plastic-ee base and the metal case we have vibration on a wood floor that the P180's rubber feets and bigger hdd grommets sucked up.

I'd say its superior to the P183 purely by design; HDD cages suck, cabling them was much more difficult than two snaps off the back panel, and then you have full access.

If you need more GPU room in the P183, you have to remove the upper HDD cage...

I like that in the corsair case you won't have to do that. I also enjoy the larger clearance below the motherboard, the P180 the metal separation plate between the mobo chamber and the hdd/psu chamber made it very difficult to plug anything in, and prevented me from using my gigabyte iRAM in the bottom PCI slot.

I think once I move off the 240mm fans into good 120mm fans, the only noise I will get is the velociraptors chirping. the H50 is pretty much dead silent, and I can't tell if the HX750 fan is running or not

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