I've been seeing ads for Antec's new open face PC case and I'm intrigued. Does anyone use one or have you seen it in person? It sound like a good idea cooling-wise, but I imagine it must be covered up whenever you aren't using it to keep the dust away. Or does that giant fan blast all the dust off on startup? Anyone have any thoughts on it? Is it the future?
My personal thoughts are that it's more show piece than anything else. I don't think it offers anything that any decent case couldn't offer in terms of function, and it's more open to accidental damage of components and you can't put anything on top of it.
In any case, I don't have anything against it, I just don't see it taking over from more practical designs.
[Edit] Plus, have you seen the price? It's priced for high-end features, but it's definitely not a high-end case (beyond having a completely unique style).
Well, the good: I'm just glad someone realized that ATX doesn't necessarily mean "rectangle". Or, if you're Alienware, "rectangle with curves pasted on."
The bad: What? Back to the ca. 1985 horizontal desktop designs? With the added bonus that I can't even stack anything on top of it to save space? Super double ultra --!
The ugly: That fan must HOWL like the winds of Nod...
Oh I dunno about the fan; it's very large so it's probably running at a pretty low (and quiet) RPM. The rest I'm with you on
Sounds like a good case to have around. Not to put any components in, but to act as a dust magnet! We have an open case design at our house, and it has tons of dust which gets all over and makes the CPU overheat. By open case design, I mean we lost the side cover somehow.
Unless you have about three air filters surounding the thing, open case sounds like a really bad idea. The fans would just suck all the dust in the room right into the case... Not to mention, if you have any children, open case = really bad idea. Both from toys being thrown in and breaking something or someone reaching their arm in and getting zapped. And imagine if someone spilled their drink on it... Ouch...
Yeah, open facings on a case are fucking retarded in a monumental way, no matter how much air flow they get. The heatsinks will be plugged solid inside a month, at which point you can put a wind tunnel turbine on top of the thing and you'll bend the fins before you get your cpu's to cool from air flow to any useful degree.
Real case designs have all the fans set for exhaust with the intake ventilation filtered with at least a pinhole sheetmetal design, if not an actual high flow filter, and they still need blown out once a year or more in moderate settings. The only advantage that thing has is that when you blew it out every week or two, it wouldn't need opened.
I just don't like my precious computer parts exposed to the outside world. I have never in my life spilled anything on my computer (except maybe something on the keyboard once or twice when I was little) but the moment I got an open case like that would be when that changed. OR somebody else would walk by and spill something on it
- either way. cool design, but I wouldn't trust it. that airflow discussion seems valid, though I don't see why the powerful fan on the top wouldn't work just fine, my Zalman heatsink has the fan sideways (perpendicular to the CPU) which is wierd, so I don't really think you'd have to bend anything if you just have the right heatsink
The airflow works just fine. Then you plug the fins with dust. You do have dust on your planet right?
It would work great in a clean room, who here wears a plastic suit and has airlock controlled access to their computer?
The fan is too low.
It will interfere with certain coolers and video cards. Don't get it.
That seems like a terrible design.
I have an Antec 900 and I really like it. It's a little loud but overall a pretty nice case.
I'm using one of their old SOHO file server cases still., side exhaust, latch released panel, four external 5.25 bays, two external 3.5 bays, four internal, with room for another three drive cage underneath, and E-ATX, plenty of room for even the biggest mobo.
My freind had a computer that was missing its side. He kept it on a table so that atleast it wasn't on the floor, but things still make there way inside, in this case it was a spider. so the little spider gets inside and his cat, who loves to eat spiders, pounced into this computer. even after he extracted the dead cat the computer still wouldn't run.
Dead cat? How'd the computer kill the cat? Or did you mean the spider?
*BBZZZAAAAPPPP*
I personally use a http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811208005. Works well, and looks awesome in a low light situation Glows green like its running on kryptonite or something.
The Skeleton looks pretty interesting but just isn't my thing, the idea of all those expensive parts being exposed just doesn't sit well with me. I'm happy with the Antec Nine Hundred which is what I'm using right now.
Well, there are plenty of amps running through some of the systems ... just figured the cat would have had to be pretty dedicated to get itself electrocuted. Guess biting into some of the wires (like to the gfx card) would do it, though.
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