I've splurged for a new case and after putting everything in, including a new antec 430W PSU, the lid is on and it all works. But it's messy. Not that I'm a neat freak, but when I open the side panel to gaze at it, dreaming of what/who else I might have spent the money on, it's a bit ugly.
I've considered running an aluminium U channel vertically to conceal most of the wires but they wont be long enough to get to the drives in the bottom of the case (when I put them in).
The problem with that is that it means the possibility of pruning the cables on my PSU, which has a warranty on it, and then using the ends as fly-leads at the other end.
Do you guys have any case mods you've done recently?

Something I always did with extremely long PSU wires was leave the top (cdrom) drive bay open. I'd stuff all the extra wires in there. Then I'd use panduit to cover the cables running down to the drives. It didn't necessarily hide the wires, but it made them look very cool. The other cool thing I did was get a adaptor to put a case fan on the cpu (silent case fan of course) then slap a laser etched fan cover on it.

Greetings!

I am eagerly waiting for the TNN-500A case from Zalman. All passive cooling - no fans at all. Silent.

that looks pretty sweet, I can only imagine that something like that is going to cost an arm and a leg...

6" - 12" extensions to your PS cables should be fairly easy to find.

Here is one for 91¢.

EeeK!
Is that price on the second page correct?

I've splurged for a new case

I was checking out your case at newegg, I like it a lot, I noticed that there are 2 cd-roms in the pictures that look like they belong there (made with the case). Does this case have some kind of CD-rom bezel that comes with it, or was this just marketing?

At the moment, it is still (very heavy) vaporware. I hope they eventually release it, but yes, it will be very expensive. But totally silent!!!

Yeah. The Zalman case looks pretty cool. It will be extremely expensive and heavy though!

I'm still on a mission to get everything totally silent.

Have you seen the Hush ATX? My only problem with it is that it is basically a locked box - no tinkering or upgrades.

Yup. It's on mini-itx.com along with a few other similar things. It's very expensive though and you can't just get the casing, you have to buy it along with RAM, HD, CDROM etc...

All it really gives you in terms of functionality is the removal of the CPU fan. Everything else you can get seperately. Okay, it does look nice as well

At the moment, it is still (very heavy) vaporware.

This is not entirely correct. The TNN-500A is already available in Japan, and should be available in America and the rest of the word Q1 2004.

Have you seen the Hush ATX? My only problem with it is that it is basically a locked box

...AND it's even more expensive than the TNN-500A is!

At the moment, it is still (very heavy) vaporware.

This is not entirely correct.

True. But until I see someone actually selling it (where I can order it ), that date might still slip a bit...

The price is not suprising considering what you get. The product appears to be very well manufactured (it has to be in order to cool effectively), and you also get a silent 400W power supply. Those cooling products are not inexpensive either. Fans are very cheap (at least the standard ones on most cases are). Heat pipes and elaborate heatsinks are not.

Personally, I don't need to spend that much money for a noise level that's acceptable to me. I've purchased a Zalman CPU HS/F, and that alone cut the noise level in my machine by half (of course, the other fan was defective, or the ball bearings were a bit off). Their VGA cooler (with fan) lowered the noise level even further, and doubles as something cool to see through the window. They make great products.