Remember how I dismissed ‘modular design’. Sure at this price point, a Caselabs case may be a better choice… but can I say WOW.
The configurable options in this case are nuts. I’d be a pig in mud with this case… but ouch at that price tag $900. Is totally over the top, overkill though.
I don’t even consider this price point…
If I must be honest, everything over 100$/€ is too expensive for me.
Now I like the smart approach of doing things. There is no smart thing in the H500P. Open airflow case with PSU cover… Hello there every case since H440 did it. And it still did it best…
Honestly, that’s a good approach. I think most ‘decent’ cases can be found in the $70-100, unless you want things like Tempered glass (and a bit of flair). The trouble I face though, is that most often than not, most cases tend to disappoint in some aspect - unfortunately, I haven’t found one that checks all the boxes.
Right now, I’m running -
The 540 has some decent aspects, and some really horrid ones, like the base of the chassis.
The 740 is an improvement, but lacks storage options.
The 270R is an el-chepo, and for its price though, it was easier to build in than I had expected. I wish they included the sliding SSD trays instead of the screw-mounting based options, but I guess that’s too “premium” for that price point.
The 570X is interesting given how the ‘use-case’ of this case is out there - form and looks come first, function second, but it generally does a decent job at meeting functional duties, as long as serious watercooling or storage needs aren’t high on the list.
My general gripe though, with all the cases I’ve seen out there, are designed around the ‘mythical’ custom-water loop buyer. Space for AIOs/Radiators are given a priority, and I suppose this is driven with SSDs becoming more popular.
However, I’d like to see a $80-100 case that also has the option of say holding 8x 3.5" Drives. The only case that I think is the best compromise in this regard is the Fractal Design R5 - although, I’ve not personally built in one, but one I’ve seen ad nauseam via many many Youtube reviews.
Apologies for the lengthier rant, but sigh, I suppose I’ll continue looking for that ‘perfect’ case.
Wow, thats a hardcore fan of corsair lineup…
I personally have a modded old Cooler Master Elite 330 home\Lan PC and Fractal Design Define R4 workstation. The former is trash, but its small+light while still working well, and its looks mean nobody would even think you have a decent PC to steal it… The latter is amazing bar 3 things. Firstly non-pwm factory fans, built in manual control or not PWM would have been nice. Secondly is the width, its just a little to much for me, it feels bigger in a room than the old server fulltower it replaced due to this, and is harder to carry for distance than bigger but narrower cases. Finally is the case feet are not tall enough, they don’t let much airflow and don’t work at all on carpet, the lower dust filter literally touching even a normal office pile… I put blocks under mine.
But both of these show my preference for function first, looks second. The H500P shows why this is important, because as nice as it looks, it doesn’t work well, which combined with the plastic build quality puts it up against budget cases like the cougar spike in everything but aesthetics. Want a nice glass case for H500P money? The Thermaltake Veiw 71 is pretty good outside dust ingress concerns.
Beautiful.
… I have nothing else to add to that …
It’s not easy for me to source ‘decent’ cases here, and having built for the first time in the Air 540, I really liked the ‘basic’ features that Corsair offered.
I’ve ordered all my cases from B&H USA as they offer the cheapest DHL delivery all the way to Sri Lanka - it sounds ‘nuts’ to order an entire computer case this way, but at least I have the option of choosing what meetings my requirements and fancy I suppose.
I probably spent way too much time going through every possible ATX case on the B&H site, and unfortunately to my dismay, they do not carry Fractal Design or Phantex. Had they done so, there’s a very good chance my current Corsair lineup would have not been the case (ha!).
Honestly, I’d probably give an arm to be able to import a Define R5. It perfectly suits my needs for the ZFS replication server I need to setup sometime soon.
I ended up designing my own 3D printed solution to hold 8x HDDs in the Corsair Air 740 - the R5 wouldn’t have needed that.
@psycho_666 Running with a 3x 5.25" to 120mm fan + 4x 3.5" internal HDD so airflow is great, Also the old I\O is 3.5" external mounted, so I have swapped to a cheap ebay duel USB3.0 and best of all it looks like an old office PC, even though when it was first built it was a lot of hardware. (current G3258 was a cheap replacement after mobo death)
@bsodmike Fair enough to some degree, but on the other hand why not just have another company like NCIX Canada ship a system rather than a camera retailer… they shipped to me in Australia and NZ, and to friends in Singapore and Vietnam, so limiting yourself to B&H still seems odd to me even after having discussed it a little in a another thread. But even in B7H, you literally have almost all the main companies… No Fractal, but Silverstone, NZXT, CoolerMaster, Thermaltake, Antec, Bitfenix, In-Win Lian-Li and DeepCool all have most of their lineup represented, so its not like your stuck for choice to just Corsair. For example the NZXT H440 is 100% equivalent to the Define series, and fits that number of drives just fine. That said those 3d printed parts are AWSOME…
Thanks for bringing the NZXT H440 to my attention; I’ll really consider that on my next order. Also just emailed NCIX to see what they come up with, but on the site ‘Sri lanka’ isn’t listed.
From all the options on the B&H site, I just didn’t find anything to my liking; this is down to styling, maybe due to some functional aspect not meeting what I’m after. Weight of the package also matters. Thermaltake stuff tend to be heavier, this drives the shipping cost very high. Coolermaster I tend to avoid as they use too much ‘mesh’. The stuff rusts in no time here (I had a Black Widow that literally dust and rust now). Lian Li is nice, but expensive. I don’t like how fingerprints oxidise on the aluminium, and their cases don’t have very many grommets etc.
I have since switched to ordering most ‘tech stuff’ from Amazon now, as they’ve recent started to offer Global Shipping to Colombo. This is a hit n’ miss as only certain items qualify, and it works on a duty-prepaid system. Where as on B&H, anything can be ordered (well mostly) and then customs apply their charges here.
As of the past 2-months I’ve switched over to Amazon, but at least for the H440, when I do plan to order, chances are I’ll grab it from B&H depending on what NCIX say.
In any case, I really appreciate the advice giving me another option to consider.
Where is the intake for that case?
Have you considered looking for someone in a nearby country who can buy an R5 for you and ship it your way? Yes, you’ll need to trust someone to actually do what they promised, but then again that’s what PayPal Goods is for.
On a cycling forum I frequent, people pick up locally advertised bikes and ship them to their new owners all the time. Occasionally that includes intercontinental shipping.
Hi mate - aye, that’s another option too. I have a mate in Fort Mill, SC and I could ask him. I try not to inconvenience folks as much as possible though…
If you are considering H440 - don’t…
Consider, instead, the revised version - H442… It have one huge and one small change. It have larger front intake vents, so it breaths better, and the fan splitter thing is now a PWM fan splitter, meaning now it’s a PWM controller…
Hm, it’s not a bad case, actually…
In other news, the H500P has won awards 
Really weird that Tiny Tim Logan loved this case. I hear the panels just ‘fall off’ at the lightest touch.
GN “modded” their H500P for better airflow. Looks like no other changes other than a mesh front panel yields a noticeable drop in temperatures.
Makes sense, and should be easy to do, although honestly just modding the fan mounts to pull the 200mm fans backwards another inch would make a difference in of itself… but no idea how possible such a thing is.
And it looks good… At least to me. I think mesh looks good…
I can’t figure why he didn’t just go to a hardware store and buy some plastic screen he could cut to size. That’d definitely be cheaper for anyone else wanting to do this and would look the same from further than two feet. Plus for the top it would be easy to make it curved.
I also think it looks good though, I’m not a fan of clear plastic panels whatsoever.
I recall reading that Steve said that moving the fans back wasn’t possible. I assume that the panel on which the motherboard is mounted (can’t really call it a motherboard tray as it’s not removable) is in the way.
It’s not the motherboard tray.
There is the same bracket for fan mounting, as it is on the top, it’s on the inside of the front. Non removable. So he needs to cut it out in order to reach the mounting holes.
