[Andyf]

Hi, I just had a few questions about picking cases-

1)My first choice would be a coolermaster stacker 830, and its not very clear- I think it comes with 2 fans- would another 3-4 scythe s-flex 120mm fans (with one for the CPU cooler) be enough to get a decent airflow going? In any case, what version: I was thinking 1600rpm for the cpu (with themalright ultra 120) and 1200rpm for everything, or is 1600 the way to go?

2)The coolermaster is a little pricey (~$290 in UK)- some people have suggested various other ones (thankyou!) but there seems such a huge choice- Is there a good way of going about finding good ones, other than trawling through hundreds of reviews? And any more good (ATX form) suggestions are welcome! Of course aesthetics are personal, but its nice to know which ones tend to have good cool airflow and which ones tend to crack.

3)As for more compact towers, what are the options. A friend had a build with a tiny box case, which was quite cool, but gpu temps etc. were always a problem. Is there something in between? If so, is there something in between which could be considered the equal of a full size case in terms of cooling?

4) Completely unrelated question, stupid I know: In buying a graphics card, say the EVGA 8800GTS 320MB, they suggest a minimum current on the 12V channel. So for this card, that value is 26A (26Amps! I've fried stuff with much less!), so say I wanted this power supply (600w), which supplys 18A over 4x12v rails, is that ok? Would I combine two 12v output leads and plug into the card, or what?..
Oh, and does anyone have an opinnion on that PSU? The reviews look good!

[Vaanish]

The PSU will power that card fine.

An example of a nice ATX case would be the Antec 900, The Antec P180/P182

This is a nice cheap case: Enermax C3030 Midi Tower Case No PSU Blk/Slvr, IMO better than the popular Coolermaster Centurion 5 Silver - No PSU

[san21893]

The cooler master stacker 830 and 832 have INCREDIBLE airflow with the mesh grills on the side panels. I suggest adding a fan on the blowhole but leave out the 4 fan door unless your hsf is small enough that the door fits on. I have a tuniq and the door is useless for me. An alternative case would be the antec 900 with its fans in the front and the huge blowhole fan up top. You'll save alot going with that.

[mgcook]

antec 900 or a thermaltake armor

[Andyf]

How does the cooling in those compare with the coolermaster?

Oh, mgcook, hows your eVGA MoBo? For me its a toss up between one of those or an Asus P5K Deluxe- its been suggested that P35 might be a more forward looking choice, but no SLI. To be honest, I have no idea why I'd pick one over the other (save price of course)

[b1gapl]

Originally Posted by Andyf

How does the cooling in those compare with the coolermaster?

Oh, mgcook, hows your eVGA MoBo? For me its a toss up between one of those or an Asus P5K Deluxe- its been suggested that P35 might be a more forward looking choice, but no SLI. To be honest, I have no idea why I'd pick one over the other (save price of course)

P5K Deluxe definitely, if you have the money. What processor, are you planning on? You don't need the SLI option. Not worth the money.

[Andyf]

Planning on a Q6600 Core 2 Quad. Regardless of what the better motherboard is for the job, why is one better than the other? Quicker? Better overclocker? What about comparative perfomance out of box. You guys seem to like that Gigabyte MoBo as well... (I have a soft spot for Gigabyte ever since my FX5900XT arrived with funky blue PCB ).

Also why would I pick P5K3 vs P5K?

I agree SLI looks a little rubbish, but given I am getting (and planning to stick with) Nvidia GPUs, I thought it would be nice to keep my options open for the future, thus 2xPCIe 16 SLI is better than 2xPCIe 16 no SLI. Thus if SLI combos start to produce reasonable results in future, I have the choice. Not even thinking about Radeon so Crossfire means nothing to me.

I have found P5K Deluxe Wifi prices to be cheaper than eVGA 680i's.

[b1gapl]

The P5K Deluxe is probably best suited for quad cores, from the results, I've been seeing with other people. It's better than the 680i chipset, because first you have to update the BIOS on the 680i, to get it to support the new 45nm processors, and 1333MHz FSB, while the P35 chipset supports them natively.

The P5K3 is not something worth looking into, because it only supports DDR3 RAM, and DDR3 is too expensive.

[Andyf]

Ahh.. I see. Thanks very much, that clears a lot up. Is there such thing as a MoBo that supports DDR3 and DDR2? Just planning for the future! How long will it be before DDR3 becomes more common than DDR2 (I know its way out there at the moment)

[b1gapl]

It's not really common for motherboards, to support two kinds of RAM, but the ones that do, have buggy issues. DDR3 will probably become mainstream, sometime in the 2nd half of next year or in two years time.