Clear case? here's my review..

TacT

I decided to try out a completely clear case of the AC Ryan variety. I'm wondering if anyone else has built completely clear cases and what they thought of them and the work involved personally, how accessible they are etc.

-The Kit:

A pair of cotton gloves to prevent smearing and/or fingerprints -- useless as you still put finger prints on the case unless you're already wearing rubber gloves underneath them perhaps?

lint free cloth -- good, no scratching when you wipe!

Nuts, bolts and screw selection -- very good, plenty of spares.

Instruction manual -- mediocre.

Case -- comes in seperate panels tightly packed in bubblewrap in a nice shiny box showing you a completed one lit up. No scratches, it arrived safe and sound thankfully, got it from komplett for 100 odd myself.

Assembly -- takes a while to put together, I did it lazily over a day by the time I stripped my current case, cleaned everything up and had to do something else I wasn't too happy about I'll talk about later*.

features: plenty of mounts for drives etc. Good airflow, looks stylish, screws are done like gold buttons and I love the effect that gives to empty drive bays on the front of the case
One major problem is if you want to add drives later on you run into trouble because you need to remove the side panel with the motherboard on it to really get access to the screw mounts.

My solution to this is you might want to consider doing some cutting to the side of the case to get access to that before you install anything. I'm still contemplating it myself as I do like the case but in the meantime, there's enough room to squeeze two fingers with a screw back there to get one on that side and two on the other to balance it out

Design: Mediocre -- My system was running hot -- cpu diode 57C when I first went to stress test it and check temps on it's first run. I was wondering where the hot air was coming from and upon inspection of the psu I found my answer. The hole that is already cut wasn't quite big enough for the exhaust fan on my Antec psu. It was in effect pumping hot air back into the system for me.

I ended up pulling the psu etc then filing away at it until it was big enough and when I stress tested again it ran 36-38 cpu idle and 51 max at full load, much better. I love the case but it's not practical at all. Since I got bored and wrote this much I might as well give it a 6.5/10 score overall.

Conclusion -- if you must have one, be prepared to work with it or plan it well before putting everything together, it worked out well for me and I enjoyed putting it together, the biggest pain is trying to keep fingerprints from areas you can't access for cleaning afterwards.

OfflerCrocGod

Good review TacT - you have succeded in putting me off these kinda cases for ever:p. I never really liked the idea of having a case you had to handle with gloves, they look cool - but they are not practical. Was this system all new or was it a transplant?: if it was a trans could you tell me if the temps went up in the clear case?. The cases dont strike me as having been designed for efficient heat transfer.

TacT

yeah, I knew it would be a pain in the ass but I had to give it a shot
I bought components over the last month+ and decided I wanted to mildly light up a clear one with blue instead of a blue one with blue.

Antec 480W Trueblue with PFC.
xp3000+ Barton 10.5x200FSB with Aero 7+ HSF @ 2755rpm for best noise/performance blend, no lapping done, applied with AS5 -- it whines and fluctuates on full speed -- irritatingly so but I'm not overclocking so no problem for me.
1GB Mushkin 3200 lvl1 6-3-2-2 @ 10-3-2-2 for best results with this board.
A7N8X-X
Eicon diva ISDN modem (bb install when I get back from the holidays)
Seagate - 60GB+80GB 7200rpm 2MB cache and a 20GB backup drive that sits outside the case on my desk.
MSI CD-R/RW 52x 32x 52x
GF4 ti4200 with a Zalman heatpipe cooler (same one advertised at peats -- it runs too hot for my liking so I've stuck an old spire cpu hsf beside the card dangling from the 3 pin connection to cool it properly -- if you get a zalman heatpipe, I advise you get the fan with it!) This is soon to be replaced with a 6800U so we'll see if that changes temps at all if they ever get shipped...
4x YS-tech 80mm case fans -- 2 intake -- 2 exhaust -- 1 front intake, 1 side intake. One below psu exhaust and one above psu exhaust. I could drop another on the side but noise would be unacceptable for me anyway...

Additions -- coolermaster blue led light on the northbridge chipset to compliment the led from the psu. Lapped northbridge+hsf and applied with AS Thermal epoxy -- won't be coming off
hs to southbridge chipset with thermal epoxy also as it liked to warm up a bit.
Bonus -- the cases led lights for the front of the case are also blue and complimented everything perfectly, it's no light show but it just looks nice -- especially the blue led from the psu onto the aero7+

Temps -- the old case was a 50E jobby from Dawn and no matter how many fans I put in there I couldn't get my cpu below 53/54C max at full load while running the fan at full speed! :eek:
atm my fan doesn't make so much noise and runs 51 max at full load so I'm happy with case flow as installing everything to this case clearly dropped my temps. I'd have a hard time recommending this case to an overclocker though. Sorry offler, I didn't want to put anybody off, just keep them informed, cheers.

edit -- I did a little noise comparison by mounting 2 of the case fans with screws first then trying with rubber dongles I got from hitide and the difference with the rubber dongles (or whatever they called) is very nice -- absorbs vibrations very well.

KdjaCL

Any pics?

kdjac

TacT

I'll get some when I can get my hands on someone elses digicam over the next few days for ya -- waiting on some rounded ide cables and I still have to clean up the psu cabling

BaZmO*

Is this the same?

B.

TacT

no, mine was an AC Ryan acrylic case -- top of the cases page on www.komplett.ie was where I got mine from -- that's another completely different one I have no idea about.

[/edit] I prefer the look my case had with no components inside compared to that one there.

magick

2 of my friends have those clear cases, at first they liked them but i though their didnt feel "as solid" as normal cases, plus one of my friends cracked the back of his. Also about 2 months down the road their started noticing the dust prob building up on the case

TacT

They are not as solid as regular cases, they're fragile.
I'm sure I'll notice the same thing but I'm hopeful my air filters on the fans should do an adequate job and relieve me of that problem. When the fan filters are dirty, cleaning them isn't a problem because I have them mounted with those rubber dongles so can pull them out and put them back on very snappy after a clean up -- it's a problem for any case but moreso with this one because you're looking at it's guts constantly, time will tell.

What did your friends think, would one of them recommend them to someone else after having gone through what they did with it?

Borderfox

I got one of the ClearPc cases a couple of years ago and built it up. Loved the look of it and the wow factor. No problems building and never really found it fragile...

got it from www.clearpc.ca

TacT

added more fans -- 7volted all of them apart from the top case exhaust fan. Still waiting on my sleeving kit to clean it up. Running cool and not so noisy finally

pics of the mess so far:-

http://members.boards.ie/tacticalanni/PICT0005.JPG
http://members.boards.ie/tacticalanni/PICT0006.JPG
http://members.boards.ie/tacticalanni/PICT0007.JPG
http://members.boards.ie/tacticalanni/PICT0008.JPG

Went for a stable overclock briefly and managed 11-3-3-2.5 at 223FSB -- pic below of new results with sandra mem bench and temps. Not great but I still squeezed another 220mhz off the cpu and upped results 400+ for int/float respectively.

http://members.boards.ie/tacticalanni/oc1%20testing%20fsb.jpg

Col_Loki

Thats pretty decent with an XP !! Highest mem bandwidth ive gotten is 3500 , thats with Pc4000 Memory @ 244mhz FSB....... The boards just arent build for it (unless things have changed). And dual DDR doesent do alot at all.

Nice case / setup by the way!!

TacT

I was quite impressed with the improvement after oc'ing. Trying to loosen timings and up fsb or tighter timings with lower fsb atm to entertain myself and get best possible results. Cheers Col after trying out some air filters I decided that most of what can be brought is crap and no air gets through the fans so I decided it was time for some change.

I've since pulled the cotton/material between the plastic/metal grills and thinned it out LOADS -- made about 4/5 per 1 after purchase. Went down to the motor store yesterday and picked up some Aluminium Mesh for 1Euro a plop. Put a very fine layer of cotton on top of the mesh, folded over once making sure the holes line up carefully for best airflow then cut and screwed to the fan -- I don't want to be cleaning anything but my fans once in a while!

Pic of what it looks like when finished here

cheap, easy and definitely recommend it to anyone trying to do battle with the dust monster -- I put this off for so long but having a clear case now I don't fancy cleaning it constantly from the furrballs that might infest it without something like this in place on each and every fan -- apart from the cpu intake fan obviously as there's no dust coming into the case anymore

Now if my sleeving kit would finally like to get here I'd be really happy to know that this is the last time I'll have to open my case for a while as it's the last thing I need to do to polish off the job as well as installing my 6800U but I don't expect to see that for a week or two at least at this stage and I keep telling myself that a week/two later :dunno:

temps at idle are now 35 diode 26 socket and 18 case give or take the margin for error

TacT

Here's the before - http://members.boards.ie/tacticalanni/Before.JPG

And the after - http://members.boards.ie/tacticalanni/Front%20view.JPG
http://members.boards.ie/tacticalanni/Side%20View1.JPG
http://members.boards.ie/tacticalanni/Side%20View%202.JPG

Vantec sleeving kit is nice and the widest stuff that comes with it will fit over molex connector's no problem but you're bound to run out of the widest one which you'll need to get around the molex connector's short of removing them altogether. If you're ordering, you'll be needing two kits or the required tools to remove and replace your molex connections.
I really wanted to avoid it just for hassle's sake. I did a bit more work with the conductive tape to finish things off for now. Still need a few more cable ties to bundle the lot closer together and tie up the few loose molex splitters for the fans.

/pats self on back, time for that holiday! I'll stick this mess in the gallery now that I'm done with it..