I am putting a new system together a little at a time when I find deals. I am stuck on case info overload. There are To Many cases to pick from. I was going to go with a Antec 900 till i started reading allot of reviews that they sound like a jet plane. I don't want to spend more then about $120, less is much better. Mid tower, good cooling, quiet, wont be over clocking this rig, its for the wife I have read SO many reviews on SO many cases I have info overload, my brain is ready to explode, I dont need anything super slick looking just good quiet efficient cooling. Thermaltake? Antec? Coolermaster? Those are the three I have been looking at One more thing that I cant find much info about The Fans? I thought the bigger the fan the quieter it is? So a 200 mm fan should be much quieter the a 120mm fan? tx for your patience and help Im sure there's a similar topic in here somewhere, but I didn't see anything close Ken
The Antec 900 is a very noisy case with all the fans on high, but it will run pretty much any hardware like an icecube, it's overkill, quite frankly. Turn the fans down and it's more respectable, but I recommend the following case over the 900 for being better at doing the job quietly, and also lacking all the nasty design flaws the 900 has: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811146047 Yes, it's a shameless clone, but it's genuinely a nice case. If you want real quiet, there are better cases, but then cooling performance really does drop off. As far as noisy fans go, the bigger the fan, the quieter it can be for the same airflow. Usually bigger fans are the same noise level, so that they can push more air. In the 900's case, the 120mm fans at high (2200rpm) push around 60CFM of air and produce around 38dB of noise. The large 200mm fan (850rpm) is only about 34dB, but produces around 100CFM. In addition to that it is a lower pitch (exactly half, curiously) so less annoying. The fans in most NZXT cases however are less than 25dB, so much quieter (decibels are logarithmic, so 31dB is twice as noisy as 25)
