Anyone own a HAF Stack setup?

Psykomantis00 · April 8, 2014

So I have this idea... I want to build a monster pc instead of having multiple different machines. I don't really like the look of the HAF stacker system, but function > form as I always say. So I have this idea and I'm just wondering if anyone here has done anything similar, or, if you have the HAF Stacker, what is your setup like?

My idea is to have my gaming PC in the main ATX case with the smaller case (915 I think) on the bottom to hold water cooling stuff when I go down that road later. Then I'd get two more of the smaller cases to stack on top of the whole thing. One of these would host a small dual/quad core cpu or apu with my capture card in it to stream game play from the gaming pc. The last small case would hold a 6 core amd cpu with 8 gigs of ram with Xubuntu running and hosting my PLEX server.

Then, to top it all off, I'd like to have 1 water cooling system run through the entire case cooling all 3 cpu's and my 7990. If I did something like this (never watercooled, just have a closed loop corsair setup right now so please correct anything I've said was wrong) I would like to have a 4x120 rad in the bottom, another 4x120 in the gaming case as well as a decently sized reservoir, and a 2x120 rad in both the plex and streaming system. I'm assuming this would work as one cooling loop. I've thought maybe using between 2-3 water pumps due to the vertical issues of pumping water that high. Would this work?

fertileturtle88 · April 8, 2014

OK I have the HAF stacker right next to me and it's waiting for the rest of the parts to come in.

I just bought a R9 290 and with an 8350 on a sabertooth with the parts needed for a water cooling setup with the plenty of other parts necessary for a system. I may or may not cool the graphics card now (god knows it needs it) but I plan to have the CPU under water on a 360 rad. Keep in mind that you can do a 4x120 rad if you are willing to mod but if it can do 2 3x120 natively then I personally won't use any more and just buy another 915 for more rad space. Running multiple systems is very possible although if you are going to do this, I would recommend that you buy a 915f off the bat or you buy the power and USB front inputs as the 915 that comes in the stacker doesn't have one. To add to this, the 915r (rear mounted power supply) has a bad design if you want to use a second system a the power supply will be directly over the motherboard which is generally a bad equation especially when you see how the PSU is mounted. You would understand if you saw.

On a final note about the case, you can do 2x120 on the bottom and still use three drive cages on the bottom along with the optical drive bay or you can be like me and just throw it out for more rad space. IF you do three systems in the system then having two pumps will be plenty, just make sure one is simply under the res but I would just spend a lot on a really nice pump to make things easier. If I had the chance to do multiple systems like you then I would cool the secondary systems in an independent loop and take advantage of one of those optical bays as a secondary res for them.

Oh and I almost forgot. If you are going to use a rad and a system in the same 915 then you will really need to have a slim rad and slim fans because it will be a tight fit I personally would just slap two 140s or three 120s on the sides and call that the cooling for your secondary systems and use one side of the 915 for your rads if you are using 2 915s what seems like you are doing. I haven't seen anyone try this but you can use three 915s on a stacker setup with the 935 that would be immensely cool. I hope this helps.