Hello,
I'm currently running two PCs. One is a Win 8 gaming machine (FX-4170, HD6870, 8Gig PC1333 DDR3 - a bit dated) and the other one a passive cooled microATX onboard thing that uses 17 Watt in idle (45 Load) and is whisperquiet and my daily driver.
The whole affair looks currently like this:
Please excuse the potato quality but I think it wouldn't look better in 20 MP. The red tint on the screen is due to uneven lighting and angle.
I'm looking to replace both cases with an ATX and a micro ATX case. Not next week, but definetly this summer. I'm looking for a set of matching cases, meaning same model line.
Apart from the Noctua CPU cooler I'm running nothing special, meaning the only constraint is the cooler clearance of at least 165mm. The micro ATX case could also be half height (I can change the Graphics card) and the smaller case only needs 1 x 3.5 and 1 x 2.5 inch bays. I'd like to have the hard drives mounted sideways in the bigger case as well as good cooling.
Budgetwise I would put my maximum at 120€, ~145US-$ but I won't cry if I'm only spending 100€.
I looked into the Fractal Core series and found the combination of 1300 and 3300 interesting, as well as Arc Mini R2 and Midi R2 which are a bit on the expensive side for my taste. Toolless is not important for me since I own tools.