A case with more room to work inside?

[lightnb]

I usually recycle my cases since there's no point in buying new ones, but this time I think I need a case with a bit more space in it as this build is very cramped with the giant heat sync.

 

It's a Ryzen 3950x w/ Noctua 15d heatsync on an Aorus Master motherboard.

 

I keep my cases on a rack/stand so that I can work on the inside easily without removing them from the stand and without pulling the cables. I regular cross swap cards and drives between machines depending on what I need.

 

My current case has several problems, but is otherwise great. Looking for case options that solve these issue, without "breaking" anything that I like about my current case.

 

1. I need at least 5 hard drive spots. Some are 2.5" SSDs on 3.5" cadies, but I do use 3.5" drives too. I haven't reinstalled them all yet due to cramped space. On this case, I can pull out the "drive cage" to easily add and remove drives, and I can plug them in on the left side, which is easy to do. Some cases have the drives slide in front to back with the ports on the back, but I hate this, as it requires having to remove the entire case from the rack and pull the back panel off to plug them in. So the drives need to be side plugable, or if back pluggable, done in a way that doesn't require access to the back panel (ie. like a server where they slid into slots and don't use cables).

 

2. That said, I need more space between the motherboard area and the drive area. See the Purple region in the picture. I need that wider so I can get the SATA cables on and off without being cramped against the heat sync or graphics cards.

 

3. (Blue Arrow) I don't need 4 optical drive bays, but I do need one.

 

4. (Green Arrow) There are seven slot holes in my current case. I'd like a case with 8, where the 8th slot is right under the 7th, so that I can put a two-slot graphics card in the bottom slot of the motherboard.

 

5. I think the cables will take care of themselves once there is more space...

 

6. Airflow - this is for Blender/cycles CPU rendering. I have no idea how hot this is going to get until I can get my other drives installed and open a blender project (which is on said other drives). I have no idea what the CPU temp is until I can get Kernel 5.4+ running, which isn't in the current distro.

 

Any suggestions?

[PyroTheWise]

@lightnb  Have you looked at the Fractal Define R6 or possibly R5 cases?   I remember looking at those 2 cases when I was planning my build but I didn't need a lot of drive space and they were outside my budget anway.

 

[TVwazhere]

17 minutes ago, lightnb said:

I usually recycle my cases since there's no point in buying new ones, but this time I think I need a case with a bit more space in it as this build is very cramped with the giant heat sync.

 

It's a Ryzen 3950x w/ Noctua 15d heatsync on an Aorus Master motherboard.

-snip-

Any suggestions?

Sound like a Define R6 or Define 7 (whichever is cheaper) would be just about perfect for you.

• 1 5.25" Bay
• 6 included 3.5" bays, with room for up to 11 (Define R6) or 14(Define 7) with the purchase of additional bays
• 3 2.5" dedicated SSD trays (with up to 5 total)
• Front door is openable for extra airflow if/when needed.

It does not have 8 concurent expansion slots. However I would not suggest putting a GPU at the bottom slot anyways as this will be right up against the PSU basenet and PSU, which will starve the GPU of air. 

[Alan G]

Agree with the prior two posts.  I just updated my workstation with all new hardware from the Define R5 to the R6.  I didn't need the USB-C connector on the front panel as I charge my phone and tablet using a regular charger and the R6 without this feature was $30 cheaper and also less expensive than the R7.  both of these cases have lots of room and I presently have two SSDs (one is a mirror of the OS) on the back of the MoBo tray and three 2TB HDDs.  My work is mainly office stuff with some extensive Excel calculations along with photo processing.  The computer runs cool and quiet.