AV Techy

Apparently the blues and greens are less likely to fade and "fall out" compared to the yellows, oranges and reds. Something to bare in mind for a colour themed setup. I've had the red in several systems and haven't had an issue yet, but just thought I'd flag it up for the sake of awareness.

Just to clarify, are the fans running at full speed? or are they slower than full speed to reduce noise output? If the GPUs fans are at full speed under load then I can only conclude that they are too close together. Remember the Compensator builds? The cards were more crammed together but most of them were overheating making them less effecive. And the annoying fact that the radiator fins are oriented perpendicularly to the flow of air means there is little benefit to the GPUs from the case fans accept for driving air between the cards. It would be awesome if future GPU radiators were rotated their fins to gain from the case fans assistance. Watercooling them would be your best bet to get good cooling. And even then you might not get the awesome cooling your expecting since your running 2 x GPUs and a CPU with a MAX radiator capacity of (2x) 280mm. But you may be able to go with push+pull on the front radiator to help cooling of the loop and the motherboard. Anyway I'd recommend watercooling if money is no object, and since you have 2 GPUs and a nicely themed build I think you might be able to push for it. Not unless your spent from the GPUs...

That's a good shout. There's potential that the top of the reservoir has tubing connected (which is an inlet) and the 'IN' port on the side (which is of course an inlet) has also been connected. This should just end in a closed system that has no flow in the loop, but I don't know how damaging that could be for the pump in terms of excess pressure...

Okay, here's another question. How much water have you put into the system? It's always good to track this kind of figure as it can be hard to estimate how much water or air is left. If you were really on the ball you could disconnect all of your parts, fill all of them with water individually, and then pour the total amount of water into a measuring jug to know how much to aim to put in. Then when you put the system back together, fill it up with the water from the jug (or fill it up with the amount you measured before) and keep 'bleeding'/topping up the system until all the water from the jug has gone - it will take time, but it's fool proof.

Not a bad shout, it's a nice looking case. Would be cool if it could squeeze in (2x) 240mm radaitors, however it does seem to be a case that is to small a form factor to consider it. It's interesting how there haven't been many (or any that I've seen so far) cases to conquer all of the major points for small and decent water-cooling: - mATX (ITX would be pushing it) - (2x) 240mm radiators - Clean, minimalist design - Great air flow Those are pretty great results to be fair. Unfortunately I can't see the images right now but I'll check them out later. Always good to get ideas from fellow water-coolers. At the moment I'm checking out the Fractal Design Focus Mini to see if that's any good for water-cooling. It can fit the gear in, just. But It will be interesting to see how the temps, I'm going to guess pretty good since it hasn't get a closed off front grill.

Just to add my 2 cents. The reservoir like that is not an issue whatsoever. Like it had been mentioned before, as long as the pump is full of liquid you'll be fine. One thing I've found with larger reservoirs mounted in this they tend to say due to the weight of the liquid. The size you have looks perfect for that application though, nice choice! Just out f curiosity, have you get drain and fill ports built in. Filling is simple, but draining can cause issues. Anyway, looks good so far, best of luck with the rest!

That's a shame as the case looks great. I think we may have similar taste in cases. The biggest issue is the minimalist design (that we crave), having large flat uninterrupted panels just doesn't lend itself to low resistance air flow. That's a lot of cooling capacity, what sort of temperatures are you achieving with that? Shame about your motherboard though, a monoblock will look good though. I'm really tempted to get the 301 just to see if I can squeeze 2x 240 rads in. I don't think it's worth it though. I was really impressed by the Antec P50 I came across the other day. Apparently it can fit 2x240 rads in as standard which just sounds crazy for an mATX case of its size.

CaseLabs cases sound great but they're not affordable to the average mortal. One case I've seen that looks pretty great is the In-Win 301 Micro ATX. It has a tempered glass side panel and a clean look. They say you can only fit a 1 x 240mm radiator in the front, but you may be able to squeeze another one in the bottom if you can get around the motherboard connections proximity issue. And it doesn't break the bank. It even has tool-less side panel removal operation. It might suffer from the same cooling issues as the Evolv mATX TG however. I may take a look into this one in the next week or so, I'll see if I can remember to get back to you on whether it's any good if you're interested. It doesn't look the same as the Evolv mATX TG but it has a damn similar feature set. It's certainly one to take a look at.

I water-cooled in this case, and I would agree the temperatures aren't the best. They are stable, but not low. Under a video rendering load for half an hour the CPU would be up to around 75 degrees C which isn't great considering it was being cooled with (1x) 280 x 45mm and (1x) 240 x 40mm radiators. There just seems to be too much air resistance at the front of the case to allow the air to flow through at a decent speed. It also doesn't help that you can't take the front filter off without the front panel remaining connected (properly). Interesting case, but not particularly cool... I couldn't recommend it for those who want sub-50 degrees C water-cooling performance at heavy loads.

They do seem to be among the most popular of the mATX class cases. I've built in the Phanteks Evolv mATX, I'll consider the Define C for a future build - looks very clean and minimalist. Thanks for the response, sorry my reply is so late - I didn't get a notification that anyone responded.

3-pin fans are great if you can couple them up to a PWM source that will work with them. Fan hubs are great at doing this. Make sure you pick up the 4-pin low noise adapters, they do have a 3-pin variety but the 4-pin is the one you want. Plus with a 4-pin LNA you can use them with 3-pin fans in the future is you want to which is always nice. I was just checking the Phanteks fan spec sheet again to familiarize myself again, is the cable length really 500mm long? half a metre? If that's true, you could route that cable anywhere in a case. Maybe it's designed to target large cases, which would couple well with the minimum speed limiter.

Hello everyone, This is not an urgent question or query, more a curiosity to know which cases everyone "rates" in the Micro ATX (mATX) category from the last year or so. I'm an avid water-cooler and am planning several projects in the near future, but any suggestion regardless of water-cooling ability are welcome. I also appreciate the "value" options, below £100 / $130 / €155 suggestions would be great, but again, all suggestions are welcome. Let me know what you think, and thanks in advance for your suggestions!

If you were to do it I would definitely get some "low-noise adapters" (like the ones Noctua make) rather than a DIY resistor solution. At least with a legitimate product it won't effect a warranty if the fan fails in the future. However they will still be running continuously, but if the speed is low enough it shouldn't be noticeable.

I presume a similar issue applies to Pump motors, they really don't like DC control over their speed and only function with PWM.

That's not a bad shout, it is full of 3-pin headers (missing the 4th speed control signal pin) which may cause some issues for some PWM fans, and especially pumps if you were looking into doing water-cooling down the line (But I haven't had any hands on experience with it, so please correct me if you have). I do know fan hubs that don't have at least 1 4-pin PWM leader header can have issues controlling other PWM fans connected to 3-pin headers. I agree SpeedFan can be extremely useful, but PWM and DC fan types connected to the various types of motherboard fan headers do need to be taken into account to guarantee full control over them. It's tricky, but it would work!