I've found an amazingly kickass case on amazon.co.uk

It has a huge 400mm fan on it.

http://www.frozencpu.com/products/8272/cst-825/AeroCool_V-Touch_Pro_Mid-Tower_Case_w_400mm_Side_Fan_-_Black_EN52351.html

^ That is the case. The Aerocool V-Touch Pro

Now, the problem I have is that I want to use this case both to replace my current case (Cooler Master Centurion 5, which ironically seems to suck at cooling), and also to house a system I want to build when this one becomes obsolete.

So the case needs to be able to house both systems adequately. I'm looking for advice as to whether or not it CAN. I see the biggest problem as being whether the graphics cards can fit, since I believe the case is slightly smaller than the Centurion.

My current system is basically this:
Motherboard: ASUS SKT-775 P5B S/L 1066FSB
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6700
One DVDRW drive. One floppy drive.
One 250GB SATA hard drive
One 300GB SATA hard drive.
One 56k modem.
One network card.
One OCZ Nvidia GeForce 8800GTX graphics card
4 sticks of 1GB DDR2 800Mhz OCZ ram.
One OCZ GameXstream OCZ850GXSSLI 850W A/PFC Power supply unit.

Now, with that lot my main concern is if the GTX is going to fit. Any ideas?

In the future, I will need to upgrade this system. I plan to keep what hardware I can but add new graphics cards, processor, and motherboard.

I'm currently thinking of replacing the motherboard with one that's capable of supporting SLI or Crossfire, has 2 or 3 X16 PCI-E slots. (And they have to be PCIe2.0!)

This is for the purpose of replacing my 8800GTX with either two (or 3) Crossfired ATI Radeon 4870X2 cards, or with 2 (or 3) Nvidia GTX295 cards in SLI (double GPU per card)

Whether I use Nvidia in SLI or ATI in Crossfire depends which card turns out to be the best in the near future. Currently I'm thinking to use the GTX295.

So... can the case I'm planning on getting fit the GTX295? Can it fit multiple GTX295s? And can it fit the motherboard that I'd need to use them?

I also plan on using my current 2 hard drives along with two 1 Terabyte drives (normal, not solid state). The other hardware should all be the same, unless I need a more powerful Power supply unit.

quote The main problem I need answered....

In terms of physical dimensions the GeForce GTX 295 is a monster, measuring 10.4 inches long (26.5cm), which is wider than a full ATX motherboard

^As you can see, the GTX295 is absolutely huge. So is the Radeon. Will it go into that case?

So... can anyone help me out? I need to know about what will fit soon so that I can buy the case.

And as a secondary concern, who thinks I should get the GTX rather than the ATI card? I've heard a rumour about ATI cards having crap compatibility with some games.

Hm, that picture you linked won't open. Says something about being forbidden. But I trust your judgement with that.

The rest of the hardware should fit ok, I take it?

Any other problems that I need to think about before buying that case?

For example, I dont know if the one on amazon.co.uk comes with a fan speed controller. My guess is no. So what happens, will it just run on max speed?

Right, well, I ordered the case from amazon. I guess time will tell if it's really any good. I'll try to post here about if it was any good. I have to get my hardware reinstalled into the new case first, of course... I just hope that fan runs off a normal molex connector of one type or the other. That wasn't really made clear.

Aaaand then there's the issue of how much power it actually takes to run. I guess my 850Mhz should be enough but I know nothing about fan power usage.

Embarassingly, I just improved my CPU temperature by about 30 degrees just by attacking my heatsink with a pair of tweezers. There was about a cat's worth of fluff in there. Yet oddly, I swear it always ran hot even when new.

I wonder if they actually sent me a system with the CPU heatsink full of crap...

This message was edited by DG on Jun 27 2009.

*smacks self in head*

Yes, yes indeed I did mean 850W. I had to finish off that post in a hurry and I had a mental typo.

Oh well, the thing's ordered already. I'll just have to see what happens. I'll be happy as long as it doesn't make the system WARMER by screwing up the normal circulation of air.

Ok, so today the guy turned up and installed the case with my help. I can report back on it.

Basically... before I changed to this case, I was getting a CPU temperature (after removal of fluff) of about 40-45 degress idle, about 50-55 under load.

Right now I'm getting 48 idle... with the new case and huge fan. Hmm.

The problem is the weather has suddenly become super hot. So the external temperature is about 27-29 degrees centigrade.

I'll only be able to really tell if it helped at all when the weather gets colder.

On the upside, after taking the PC apart, cleaning the fluff out of my 8800GTX fan, and installing everything in the new case, my GPU is now 10 degrees cooler at idle. 70 centigrade rather than 80. Still seems to get about the same temperature under a high load. 85 or so.

Oh well, it was worth it anyway since during the process I got my faulty front USB sockets fixed! Some idiot had plugged them into the motherboard wrong so they had super high voltage.

Now, there's one major problem with this case. The bloody thing is too small.

I asked if my 8800GTX would fit in it ok. As it turns out, it does fit, but there is quite literally NO extra space. NONE. It's actually just about touching the hard drive cage. It's not so much that the whole case is too small, but more that they didn't space things well inside it.

Anyway, the GTX had to be put in at a funny angle (not installed like that, obviously, just put into the case), and barely fit. I hope the new generation video cards aren't any longer, otherwise I'm screwed.

Should that turn out to be the case... any ideas? I wonder if it's possible to have the hard drive cage moved, or even REMOVED. I mean, there's no reason why hard drives have to be in your actual PC case, right?

Either that or is it possible to have a case custom-built? As in put the fan panel and fan control panel thing onto a bigger case?

Unfortunately I lack a windows XP compatible digital camera.

I had an idea though. A greatly cunning idea.

Hard drive Caddies! I could put the hard drives in the space reserved for DVD drives, etc. God knows I don't need more than one DVD drive. There's space there for at least three more.

Then I could just have the metal cage thing that the hard drives normally go into removed.

That's what caddies are for. Not heard of them? A caddy is a kind of tray that fits into your DVD drive slots. The caddy holds a harddrive in a kind of frame, and can include built in HDD fans and other gadgets. I'm wondering if you can get caddies that hold more than one HDD... That would be very nice since then I'd had space for tonnes of hard drives and plenty of space for GPUs etc, too.

Anyway, the temperature today is a lot cooler and more pleasant. So it's time to test my temperatures properly.

The ambient temperature in the room is 25C.
My case temperature sensor is reading 27C.

Idle, I'm getting:
Both CPU core temps: 40C
GPU core: 55C
HDD temps: 34C (it was 30 but has risen after about 30 mins of internet use)
System/Motherboard temp: 32C

While under load (I'm using Command and Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath to test this out. With mostly maxed graphics settings. That used to make my GPU go up to nearly 83C before I defluffed it):
CPU core: max 55C
GPU core: max 67C
HDD: Max 35C
System/Motherboard: Max 35C
Case: 28C

This is all with maximum fan speeds.

What do you think? Any good?

This message was edited by DG on Jul 04 2009.

There's not really any windows nearby which could make a difference. Just a skylight about 20 feet away and a tiny little window. Neither are actually near enough to the PC to help with air circulation. Also both tend to be open anyway in this weather.

Oh well. I'm more worried about the mysterious system crash I got last time I was playing Kane's Wrath. The game started freezing for less than a second at a time. Basically stuttering intermittently. Then it suddenly shut off the display on the screen entirely, replacing it with the HDTV monitor's standard "no signal" screen.

I've never seen something like that happen before. It definitely can't have been the GPU overheating since it was actually running cooler than ever before. Could be completely unrelated to the speed controller and RivaTuner, of course. I wonder if it was just a completely random problem with the game/graphics driver.

What's odd is, before I got the latest GPU driver update, I never got this kind of crash. It always used to give a BSOD with a message about the nv4_disp display driver having malfunctioned. Something like that. This was just a complete ceasing of video feed from the PC to the monitor. It was making a repeated sound over and over like systems often do when they crash. Resetting the PC started up windows with no problem at all. Everything ran fine afterwards.

So... that was a little odd. I guess I shouldn't be too worried unless it does it again.

EDIT: Actually, it sounds a lot like the problem this guy is having...
http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=100743369
Black screen for him. Blue screen for me. But either way, it's the monitor not getting a signal. I also got looping sound like he did.
Seems everyone's suggesting it's due to a driver problem. I bet it IS the new Nvidia drivers. Goddamit.

The older driver just had a different crash. The new driver supposedly improves performance in a lot of games.

Anyway, Nvidia drivers just seem to be a bit crap and unstable in general. I've ALWAYS had one BSOD display driver crash screen of one type or another, ever since I started using this video card. Oh well. I've not had the same problem again so far, anyway.