IMO if you're not going to include any conventionally placed drive bays or support large radiators on the top/bottom there's no reason to still have the case ~6" longer than the mobo tray; 2 inches longer is enough to allow easy cable management with long GPUs. Just use the back of the mobo tray and PSU box lid for drive mount points.
more space the better, is a massive PITA to NOT have enough room for wiring or very tight bending cables around, there is a market for as small as possible, there is also a market for room to accommodate. besides the 3 panels of glass, and seems like an open top with no dust filter (and no word on bottom dust filter) seems like a nice design..I got a fractal define C, while it is nice enough case, the lack of behind the motherboard/harddrive area and very limited room for cabling, I would have much prefered the "bigger is better" approach within reason.
A buyer should not have to go out and buy extra hard drive/ssd trays to use more than 1 out of the box (Phanteks) and having cramped conditions to work in with a shroud that is permanently attached (to many makers to list)
anyways, your opinion is cramp it up so is less big or something along those lines, my opinion is, as long as it does not hurt ease of use, more space for proper build, ease of wiring is what is most important, nothing like sardine can worth of space and trying to cram everything in without totally screwing thaermals or just having a massive pain in the arse to wire it all up easily (quickly) ^.^
I do wish this trend of boring looking cases would end soon. It would also be nice if they used all of that open space for something like drive bays or something not for 5.25 bays but 3.5 & 2.5 extra bays would be nice.
I hope the next trend will have cases makers dividing the areas of the case up so it give sealed off areas for the CPU chamber then a middle chamber for graphics cards. I did this to my Antec 900 case. I removed my 5.25 optical drives and added a third fan in the front at the top of the front giving me three fans blowing into the case. I then added in a wall that makes the case into 2 chambers 1 for the CPU and the other for the Graphics cards and PSU. The top case fan 210mm is sucking the warm air up and out of the case and the back top fan is also blowing into the case. My temps dropped by 20c on the CPU and about the same for the GPU. Being that my card is from Sapphire and has the TRI-X cooler on it I have the card venting out the side of the case after I modded the side panel.
It both looks great and works even better. These case makers need to start thinking of things like this instead of just follow the rest of the crowd and making case that all pretty much look the same and waste all of that space inside of them. These new cases are just great big heat chambers that let your computer basically cook itself to death. Yes water cooling helps out a lot but for those on air these new cases are next to useless. But hey they all look pretty with those flashing lights and are great around Christmas time because you can use your blinking case as your Christmas tree. I have 5 hard drives and 1 SSD drive so most of these new cases are useless to me well unless I want to just install them and let them sit in the bottom of the case loose.
to each own, as long as has proper ventilation, with well designed filtering with space to wire it up easily/safely, having a fully open path of airflow is MUCH better 9/10 ten sectioning things off, far far to many cases seal the PSU and hard drives in the bottom inhibiting airflow to actually keep HDD/SSD in a decent temperature range, or use shrouds to hide the wiring and make it a massive pain in the arse to plug everything up.
Nice open cases with place to strap the wiring in is always prefered (for me) there is a reason why MOST cases these days do not section things off, that was the OLD style and generally did NOT help temperatures or noise gave more places for dust to settle.
anyways, ditching the 5inch mounts for optical opened up alot of room, all makers should go that route of open front ditch the majority of that space for maybe 1 usable 5inch, 3x120/140mm front fan with ability to use a boat load of 2.5/3inch drives (i.e SSD or HDD)tray design works well enough, but they need to be SOLID not flexible ready to fall down and not require the user to go out and buy extra caddies, also for temperature reasons IMO the trays need to be basically fully open not enclosed blocking airflow ^.^
normal airflow is front to mid/top back, the top fan is best off slightly towards front of case rather than trying to compete with the rear exhaust often enough airflow is forced one direction or another which 9/10 means either CPU is hotter than should be, or GPU is, years ago Intel had a chimney and some Dell cases did as well for the CPU to get direct airflow, but, they worked very poorly most times made the fans overwork, starved the cpu socket area for needed airflow, the ram area for needed airflow etc...to have a users moveable divider suppose can kind of make sense, but you do not want this hard mounted touching the board as that can be a very bad idea.
A duct of sorts to dedicate air towards GPU front to back (usually coolest air and filtered this way) and maybe another duct directed/dedicated near the cpu area keeping in mind socket/ram area wouldnt be a bad idea, leave 1 duct for air to the hard drives or something wouldnt be a bad thing, but the air needs to be UNBLOCKED.
I am with you on the makers need to concentrate on form/function not making all glitzy and fancy lighting when everything else suffers as a result.
for god sake, put a shroud, make removable or at least full/multiple airports so air that needs to get behind tray (for SSD/HDD/PSU/back of mobo) is not blocked off and has a way to get in/out.
Yes I think they need open mesh fronts for the air flow. These closed in cases you see so much of now only having slight openings at the sides of the front air really not allowing the front fans to do their jobs at all. The whole reason for having 2 or 3 fans in the front is for max air flow. On my old Antec 900 that I converted it has the mesh like openings from top to bottom now so the front fans are allowed to move max air into the case. The big top fan in my case moves a lot of air so much so that I had to reverse the back case fan to blow into the system case. The CPU cooler is a Zalman 9900MAX Black pearl Nickel Plated. It is pointed up so the fan on it blows straight up into the big top case fan. This cooler is fairly great and does a good job considering it's size when compared to some of today's coolers.
In my own case I found that sectioning off the CPU and the GPU allowed for way better cooling for each of them. I no longer have the heat from the graphics card being sucked up to the CPU which allowed for plus 20c drops on the CPU. The graphics card now vents out the side of the case and it never goes over 57c under load before with it just blowing air inside the case it got up to 65c-70c and the CPU was always hitting 75c-79c while gaming it is Overclocked to 5.1GHz now it ranges from 54c-60c in a normal gaming type load.
If I was to run the CPU stress testers before the changes the CPU was hitting 80c-88c now it hits 65c-74c in the stress testers which is well within range of this CPU's thermo's now. Idle temps are a lot lower as well. So for me having a case setup like this is ideal & I am hoping that some day we can be able to just buy cases like this because it was a lot of work to get my case like this and the cable management on this Antec 900 is next to not there. I did manage to get all of the wires in behind the back side but it was a task and a half and it was a tight fit to get the back case side on but it did go on and there is a lot of air flow because of the way these cases were made with the drives pointing front to back and not mounted side ways. I choose all thin hard drives so they would not reduce air flow to much and the SSD is well thin anyways.
The temps I stated are from after I moved the system up from the basement the living room is warmer than the basement so the temps for when I had this system in the basement were even lower than what I stated here because the basement summer or winter is pretty much 17c-19c always upstairs room temp is 21c-22c. When summer rolls around the system goes back in the basement since it will pretty much cook itself when the upstairs hits 27-30c mid summer ( no AC).
I had to make a correction about that 5.1GHz since I moved it upstairs I reduced it to 5.0GHz it was spiking the temps once and a while when the furnace reducing it 100MHz and a slight voltage decrease as well put in the temps I stated 100% of the time. When it was down stairs never had the problem. The cooler is good but being a air cooler it has limits. I would go water cooling but the case has no option for a inside the case water cooler it does have the ports to install a external rad but that is pretty old school approach..lol
loving the looks of all these, except that I wish the glass panels were solid metal. Something like the old Antec performance series or Fractals' Define stuff. I just want a black cube with a bunch of fans (and man do I wish the windowless Define cases didn't have that optional fan mount on the side panel to break up the look)
3 front intake, 1 or 2 out at the back/top, solid front with some side vents right behind it for airflow and I'm golden. If all these RGB cases had non-glass versions I'd be so spoiled for choice :(
The front of this case looks really really poorly ventilated. And the top fan slot really doesn't look great with just the regular perforation there. I really don't think this will be a great case. in terms of thermals and finished looks.
BTW: The top 120/1400mm fan location is not occupied. I think you mean 140mm here.
as long as internals/shroud is properly arranged, they probably have side airvents so the front fans get tons of air, for example fractal design define C, I got 3 fans in the "face" of the case, lots of little slots all the way up and down front it is not at all starved for air (maybe a bit cause of dust filter) this case if was solid panel instead of glass looks a bit better design than the FD Define C IMO, not nearly as "compressed" a design and likely far far easier to wire things up (at least subjectively)
I think it would be a great case for themerals BUT that top of case fan port I would move it a bit more forwards or something and a magnetic filter in the box, hopefully there is enough trays for SSD/HDD included in the box.
like said, IMO seems will/is very very well ventilated and at least the PSU shroud is not a solid chunk with no way for air to get in/out, seems like a bigger version of mine except for the top fan I suppose (which mine has 3x with included solid top that is removable can use included dust filter)
mine, that is really the only downfall, not quite wide enough to make wiring a bit easier, and front to back is not quite long enough makes wiring the SSD/HHD a major pain cause fingers fight to get them suckers in and the shroud is barely tall enough....well thought out design just needed a bit more room length/width/height.
anyways, as long as it has the font like my FD Define C, air getting to the front fans is NOT a problem I can say that much for sure ^.^
Wonder if this will be available in Canada, hopefully one not using all walls as glass ^.^
http://www.fsplifestyle.com/en/product/CMT510.html another link for those wondering to show some animation might help, seems solid design IMO, am offering them a suggestion to have a solid panel not glass type version, dont need to see my pretty lights, want functional which this seems to fit the bill to a tea, at least seems easy to wire it up.
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DanNeely - Thursday, November 16, 2017 - link
IMO if you're not going to include any conventionally placed drive bays or support large radiators on the top/bottom there's no reason to still have the case ~6" longer than the mobo tray; 2 inches longer is enough to allow easy cable management with long GPUs. Just use the back of the mobo tray and PSU box lid for drive mount points.Dragonstongue - Thursday, November 16, 2017 - link
more space the better, is a massive PITA to NOT have enough room for wiring or very tight bending cables around, there is a market for as small as possible, there is also a market for room to accommodate. besides the 3 panels of glass, and seems like an open top with no dust filter (and no word on bottom dust filter) seems like a nice design..I got a fractal define C, while it is nice enough case, the lack of behind the motherboard/harddrive area and very limited room for cabling, I would have much prefered the "bigger is better" approach within reason.A buyer should not have to go out and buy extra hard drive/ssd trays to use more than 1 out of the box (Phanteks) and having cramped conditions to work in with a shroud that is permanently attached (to many makers to list)
anyways, your opinion is cramp it up so is less big or something along those lines, my opinion is, as long as it does not hurt ease of use, more space for proper build, ease of wiring is what is most important, nothing like sardine can worth of space and trying to cram everything in without totally screwing thaermals or just having a massive pain in the arse to wire it all up easily (quickly) ^.^
inighthawki - Thursday, November 16, 2017 - link
Let's not forget that a case designed with a radiator in mind also means support for custom loops (not just AIOs), so you need room for a pump.rocky12345 - Thursday, November 16, 2017 - link
Great write up thanks.I do wish this trend of boring looking cases would end soon. It would also be nice if they used all of that open space for something like drive bays or something not for 5.25 bays but 3.5 & 2.5 extra bays would be nice.
I hope the next trend will have cases makers dividing the areas of the case up so it give sealed off areas for the CPU chamber then a middle chamber for graphics cards. I did this to my Antec 900 case. I removed my 5.25 optical drives and added a third fan in the front at the top of the front giving me three fans blowing into the case. I then added in a wall that makes the case into 2 chambers 1 for the CPU and the other for the Graphics cards and PSU. The top case fan 210mm is sucking the warm air up and out of the case and the back top fan is also blowing into the case. My temps dropped by 20c on the CPU and about the same for the GPU. Being that my card is from Sapphire and has the TRI-X cooler on it I have the card venting out the side of the case after I modded the side panel.
It both looks great and works even better. These case makers need to start thinking of things like this instead of just follow the rest of the crowd and making case that all pretty much look the same and waste all of that space inside of them. These new cases are just great big heat chambers that let your computer basically cook itself to death. Yes water cooling helps out a lot but for those on air these new cases are next to useless. But hey they all look pretty with those flashing lights and are great around Christmas time because you can use your blinking case as your Christmas tree. I have 5 hard drives and 1 SSD drive so most of these new cases are useless to me well unless I want to just install them and let them sit in the bottom of the case loose.
Dragonstongue - Thursday, November 16, 2017 - link
Corsair Air series :)to each own, as long as has proper ventilation, with well designed filtering with space to wire it up easily/safely, having a fully open path of airflow is MUCH better 9/10 ten sectioning things off, far far to many cases seal the PSU and hard drives in the bottom inhibiting airflow to actually keep HDD/SSD in a decent temperature range, or use shrouds to hide the wiring and make it a massive pain in the arse to plug everything up.
Nice open cases with place to strap the wiring in is always prefered (for me) there is a reason why MOST cases these days do not section things off, that was the OLD style and generally did NOT help temperatures or noise gave more places for dust to settle.
anyways, ditching the 5inch mounts for optical opened up alot of room, all makers should go that route of open front ditch the majority of that space for maybe 1 usable 5inch, 3x120/140mm front fan with ability to use a boat load of 2.5/3inch drives (i.e SSD or HDD)tray design works well enough, but they need to be SOLID not flexible ready to fall down and not require the user to go out and buy extra caddies, also for temperature reasons IMO the trays need to be basically fully open not enclosed blocking airflow ^.^
normal airflow is front to mid/top back, the top fan is best off slightly towards front of case rather than trying to compete with the rear exhaust often enough airflow is forced one direction or another which 9/10 means either CPU is hotter than should be, or GPU is, years ago Intel had a chimney and some Dell cases did as well for the CPU to get direct airflow, but, they worked very poorly most times made the fans overwork, starved the cpu socket area for needed airflow, the ram area for needed airflow etc...to have a users moveable divider suppose can kind of make sense, but you do not want this hard mounted touching the board as that can be a very bad idea.
A duct of sorts to dedicate air towards GPU front to back (usually coolest air and filtered this way) and maybe another duct directed/dedicated near the cpu area keeping in mind socket/ram area wouldnt be a bad idea, leave 1 duct for air to the hard drives or something wouldnt be a bad thing, but the air needs to be UNBLOCKED.
I am with you on the makers need to concentrate on form/function not making all glitzy and fancy lighting when everything else suffers as a result.
for god sake, put a shroud, make removable or at least full/multiple airports so air that needs to get behind tray (for SSD/HDD/PSU/back of mobo) is not blocked off and has a way to get in/out.
rocky12345 - Thursday, November 16, 2017 - link
Yes I think they need open mesh fronts for the air flow. These closed in cases you see so much of now only having slight openings at the sides of the front air really not allowing the front fans to do their jobs at all. The whole reason for having 2 or 3 fans in the front is for max air flow. On my old Antec 900 that I converted it has the mesh like openings from top to bottom now so the front fans are allowed to move max air into the case. The big top fan in my case moves a lot of air so much so that I had to reverse the back case fan to blow into the system case. The CPU cooler is a Zalman 9900MAX Black pearl Nickel Plated. It is pointed up so the fan on it blows straight up into the big top case fan. This cooler is fairly great and does a good job considering it's size when compared to some of today's coolers.In my own case I found that sectioning off the CPU and the GPU allowed for way better cooling for each of them. I no longer have the heat from the graphics card being sucked up to the CPU which allowed for plus 20c drops on the CPU. The graphics card now vents out the side of the case and it never goes over 57c under load before with it just blowing air inside the case it got up to 65c-70c and the CPU was always hitting 75c-79c while gaming it is Overclocked to 5.1GHz now it ranges from 54c-60c in a normal gaming type load.
If I was to run the CPU stress testers before the changes the CPU was hitting 80c-88c now it hits 65c-74c in the stress testers which is well within range of this CPU's thermo's now. Idle temps are a lot lower as well. So for me having a case setup like this is ideal & I am hoping that some day we can be able to just buy cases like this because it was a lot of work to get my case like this and the cable management on this Antec 900 is next to not there. I did manage to get all of the wires in behind the back side but it was a task and a half and it was a tight fit to get the back case side on but it did go on and there is a lot of air flow because of the way these cases were made with the drives pointing front to back and not mounted side ways. I choose all thin hard drives so they would not reduce air flow to much and the SSD is well thin anyways.
The temps I stated are from after I moved the system up from the basement the living room is warmer than the basement so the temps for when I had this system in the basement were even lower than what I stated here because the basement summer or winter is pretty much 17c-19c always upstairs room temp is 21c-22c. When summer rolls around the system goes back in the basement since it will pretty much cook itself when the upstairs hits 27-30c mid summer ( no AC).
rocky12345 - Thursday, November 16, 2017 - link
I had to make a correction about that 5.1GHz since I moved it upstairs I reduced it to 5.0GHz it was spiking the temps once and a while when the furnace reducing it 100MHz and a slight voltage decrease as well put in the temps I stated 100% of the time. When it was down stairs never had the problem. The cooler is good but being a air cooler it has limits. I would go water cooling but the case has no option for a inside the case water cooler it does have the ports to install a external rad but that is pretty old school approach..lolMamiyaOtaru - Saturday, November 18, 2017 - link
loving the looks of all these, except that I wish the glass panels were solid metal. Something like the old Antec performance series or Fractals' Define stuff. I just want a black cube with a bunch of fans (and man do I wish the windowless Define cases didn't have that optional fan mount on the side panel to break up the look)3 front intake, 1 or 2 out at the back/top, solid front with some side vents right behind it for airflow and I'm golden. If all these RGB cases had non-glass versions I'd be so spoiled for choice :(
qlum - Thursday, November 16, 2017 - link
The front of this case looks really really poorly ventilated. And the top fan slot really doesn't look great with just the regular perforation there. I really don't think this will be a great case. in terms of thermals and finished looks.BTW:
The top 120/1400mm fan location is not occupied.
I think you mean 140mm here.
Dragonstongue - Thursday, November 16, 2017 - link
as long as internals/shroud is properly arranged, they probably have side airvents so the front fans get tons of air, for example fractal design define C, I got 3 fans in the "face" of the case, lots of little slots all the way up and down front it is not at all starved for air (maybe a bit cause of dust filter) this case if was solid panel instead of glass looks a bit better design than the FD Define C IMO, not nearly as "compressed" a design and likely far far easier to wire things up (at least subjectively)I think it would be a great case for themerals BUT that top of case fan port I would move it a bit more forwards or something and a magnetic filter in the box, hopefully there is enough trays for SSD/HDD included in the box.
like said, IMO seems will/is very very well ventilated and at least the PSU shroud is not a solid chunk with no way for air to get in/out, seems like a bigger version of mine except for the top fan I suppose (which mine has 3x with included solid top that is removable can use included dust filter)
mine, that is really the only downfall, not quite wide enough to make wiring a bit easier, and front to back is not quite long enough makes wiring the SSD/HHD a major pain cause fingers fight to get them suckers in and the shroud is barely tall enough....well thought out design just needed a bit more room length/width/height.
anyways, as long as it has the font like my FD Define C, air getting to the front fans is NOT a problem I can say that much for sure ^.^
Wonder if this will be available in Canada, hopefully one not using all walls as glass ^.^
Dragonstongue - Thursday, November 16, 2017 - link
http://www.fsplifestyle.com/en/product/CMT510.htmlanother link for those wondering to show some animation might help, seems solid design IMO, am offering them a suggestion to have a solid panel not glass type version, dont need to see my pretty lights, want functional which this seems to fit the bill to a tea, at least seems easy to wire it up.