Case upgrade question

Originally Posted by Relic

I'll second BlueMikey's recommendation. I built a friend's computer in a Centurion 5, and it's a really nice case. It's well made, has good ventilation, easy to work in, and looks good to boot. The tool-free assembly actually works right; I think I used a grand total of one screw to install all of the drives and cards in the thing, and that was only because I didn't really want to hold this monster in place with a little plastic clip. ^^

The only downside is that the front panel leaks out lots of noise, so you have to choose your parts carefully if you want a quiet PC. Noisy hard drives are particularly annoying in it. The Hitachi T7K250 that I installed in it was barely audible, but the seek noise of the Seagate 7200.9 that he added to it is quite noisy. His case was quite a bit noisier than my stock Antec P180 even without the Seagate drive, but then, the Antec costs almost 3 times as much as the Cooler Master.

Yeah, Relic, I was wondering why you were comparing a case specifically designed for maximum cooling and quiet operation against the Centurion (which isn't bad at all, but it's outclassed in this case). I'm not a big fan of tooless setups myself, since with a minimum of effort you can be pretty sure that nothing is going to fall off or threaten to break other components.

If he sticks with the Centurion case, he should keep in mind what was said above. A good place to look for quiet parts and reviews is SilentPCReview.com. While he doesn't need to get everything quiet, swapping out the noisest bits will make a difference.

Jam it back in, in the dark.