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  • Qwertilot - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link

    Budget maybe but surely the DS4 is their 'size concious' model? That one is almost legitimately 'small', although more medium sized really :)
    (456*207*520 for this vs 380*200*480 for the 4.).
  • ochadd - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link

    I'm really digging this layout. Coming from an Antec P182 which has seen better days. Silent but with much easier access to components.
  • Aikouka - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link

    My only complaint would be that I don't understand the aversion to allowing side-mounted case fans. I can understand the annoyance of having something attached to the object that gets removed the most (I recommend using an extension cable), but the biggest thing for me is providing the utmost freshest air to my air-cooled GPU. Bottom-mounted fans do help with this, but they aren't as good as side-mounted fans. Corsair has a silent case with a side-mounted fan in their Obsidian 550D, but as an ex-owner of one, I found it a little too small. I would've liked one to be the size of the 800D.
  • Impulses - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link

    While I agree that a side mounted fan is very effective, it's also a big liability if noise is a primary concern. For one thing, if that side of the case is facing the user then all the extra damping in a case like this will have gone to waste, since noise from the side fan and the GPUs will spill out directly unto the user.

    Second, a side fan is more likely to introduce vibration issues which can be worse than any amount of fan noise. Whether more airflow, more direct airflow, and low speed fans can compensate for lack of damping and baffles is another story... But this case is definitely taking the latter approach.

    Personally, I really like innovative designs like the Corsair Air 540 with it's two compartments & Silverstone's Raven/Fortress with the internals turned 90 degrees... The maze of often unused drive bays in the front of most cases is airflow's biggest enemy, to say nothing of the S path they force by having too many 5.25" bays directly in front of the CPU.
  • raymondchan - Monday, November 24, 2014 - link

    The only significant difference from my now 5 year old Fractal Design Refine R3 is a removable hard drive cage to allow video cards longer than the width of the motherboard. The remaining differences are mostly superficial.

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