What an interesting bundle.
Right off the top we have a great case, its fairly large with XL-ATX support. What I thought was interesting about the case, and I would love to hear others thoughts on this, is the ventilation through the clear side panel. I am extremely used to seeing solid clear panels which offer very little airflow. Currently I am running the haf-xb and found that I had to replace the clear cover with the mesh, because of temperature issues. It was very hard to pull heat away from two Evga 780ti sc cards without a top fan for exhaust, and only passive airflow out the side of the case. As this computer does pull 650 watts there is a ton of heat to remove from the case.
Which leads me into the second piece of this bundle, the EDG 750 power supply. I am currently running a Raidmax RX-1200AE, which claims to be a 1200 watt, 80 plus gold certified power supply. What I think is really cool about the EDG 750 over most power supplies is that is completely modular. I know its a preference thing, but there is something to be said for using every wire, and having the ability to remove the wires you don't need. The included flat wires are also a very nice touch in my opinion. As I am running an i7 3930k processor on an old H100i cooling loop, with 2 EVGA 780ti sc cards in sli and am only pulling 650 watts I think that this psu could handle the load. I dont know if this power supply would handle that load silently however. As this machine will pull more than 500 watts most of the day, which is 66% - 86% of its maximum load. Personally I shoot for 66% of maximum load as the upper bounds when buying a new power supply. I dont know what do you guys think?
The next piece on this list is a set of true quiet fans. These are interesting to me for a few reasons. As previously stated I was having trouble keeping the two 780 ti's cool, and the first thing I did was add the ventilation by replacing the clear cover, however because I use these cards under nearly max load I was still having trouble keeping them cool. So I put a custom cooling loop in just for these cards. I dropped out a triple 120mm radiator into the front of this case to provide enough surface area to cool them. Because I was limited on space I used 3 industrial noctua sp fans in push to pull as much heat off the fins as possible. I actually found that there was very little difference between running the fans at 1000RPM and 3000RPM. At least in my case where there is enough surface area to dump the heat passively the fans can, almost, be turned off. A minimal airflow is still required to remove heat. I know that these might not have the optimal static pressure rating, but I think these could be used on a radiator setup provided there was already enough surface area to dump the heat through radiation. As one of my best friends put it, a nuclear engineer, 'Hell if you have a large enough reservoir you do not even need a radiator' and then cited a lake for instance.
I don't know how I feel about the kühler h2o 1250. I am using the H100i still, and I have had several problems with my copy. The H100i I am using kinda fell apart on me. I should have known early on when the plastic all peeled away, I replaced the clamps with zip ties at the time. Eventually the tubing slipped off of the radiator mount, a feat I did not think possible. Upon further inspection the interior of the tube seemed to have deteriorated away. Since then I replaced the tubing and liquid with distilled water and its still functional. The question I have about the kühler h2o 1250 is whether the two pumps actually provide any tangible benefit. After my experiments with air flow across fins of a radiator I couldn't help but think that even at a slower flow rate the water in the loop would still all have to heat up over time, and the steady state of both systems would be relatively identical? As a Computer Engineer my thermal dynamics is fairly limited, from what I understand the only reason to have a higher flow rate or pressure would be to put more resistance into the loop?
The next thing in this bundle is a headset. I am currently using a Corsair Vengence 2100, a gaming headset. I am told that it has extremely poor audio quality and the microphone is awful, from some of my friends that have much more expensive headsets. I'd like to learn more about audio in general, and I'm sure some of you are extremely knowledgeable about these headsets. This one appears to be bluetooth, and as I do love wireless headsets I'd love to hear what you guys thing about this one. Because it is bluetooth I would assume that audio quality would be degraded just like usb and wifi because of the digital transmission / compression as opposed to onboard digital to analogue conversion and output to analogue lines?
Finally we have some lights, relatively straightforward. In my experience lighting is hit or miss. Personally I love lighting, but because my machines are located in living areas lighting can become an issue from time to time. I have found red lights to be the least intrusive as they are not as bright as the blues and greens.
This is a very complete set of components to house nearly any PC, I think I would have to go with the case as my favorite in the bundle because of its compatibility with most hardware components. It is large enough to house at least 2 radiators, perhaps more with clever placement. Cable management looks to be a lot easier because it is a relatively large case. I just really like the decision to add ventilation into the clear side panel. Am I alone on this?
