This new EVGA case has blown me away

[T_Yamamoto]

Still on the fence? After seeing the price tag I immediately jumped over to the sensible side of the fence.

Exactly.

But I mean, people will buy it.

People buy MM cases so...

 

[smackababy]

Exactly.

But I mean, people will buy it.

People buy MM cases so...

MM cases are a whole different monster than this. MM has a ton more room and is made specifically for water cooling set ups.

 

[QueBert]

Still on the fence? After seeing the price tag I immediately jumped over to the sensible side of the fence.

It's small which is a plus to me, and if the review's accurate the PSU is very solid and pretty quiet. I paid over $200 for my current iTX case & PSU. If I was to buy any other case of this size I'd have to buy one of those funky server looking PSU's, which aren't exactly cheap, especially good ones. I dunno to me $189 isn't cheap but it's not really expensive considering what you get.

 

[lehtv]

I dunno man. A decent enough ITX case costs $50-$110 (CM 130, Prodigy, Q03B, Q08B ), and a decent SFX PSU costs $65 or $95 depending on whether you want Bronze or Gold.

The main competitor to EVGA Hadron seems to be Prodigy which easily supports ATX PSUs, giving you even more options to get the best bang for buck PSU. Potentially you can get a decent mITX case+PSU for almost half the cost of a Hadron.

 

[tviceman]

How is the graphics card getting any airflow?

 

[QueBert]

I dunno man. A decent enough ITX case costs $50-$110 (CM 130, Prodigy, Q03B, Q08B ), and a decent SFX PSU costs $65 or $95 depending on whether you want Bronze or Gold.

The main competitor to EVGA Hadron seems to be Prodigy which easily supports ATX PSUs, giving you even more options to get the best bang for buck PSU. Potentially you can get a decent mITX case+PSU for almost half the cost of a Hadron.

I love my Prodigy, but I don't see it as an iTX case. I know technically it is, but it's ginormous for iTX. Here's a pic of both

The Prodigy's beautiful but the size is just too big if you want a case that's truly small. I read a few more reviews and they said the PSU in the Hadron is whisper quiet.

How is the graphics card getting any airflow?

should be good for getting air flow to the video card.

 

[tviceman]

Passive intake does not sound "good." It sounds like GPU fans ramping up considerably since such fans will not have direct airflow to work with. One 120mm fan would go a long ways to provide more than adequate airflow to the graphics card itself. Such a shame.

 

[QueBert]

With the small size and 2 120 fans on top the video cards fan shouldn't have to work too hard. My prodigy has 1 fan on top only and my video card stays pretty cool and it's fan doesn't rev up too much even under load. I dunno I guess I'll find out when I can actually order one of these suckers.

 

[Smartazz]

It's so much smaller than the Prodigy. I'm not surprised the power supply has to be so small.

 

[aigomorla]

Exactly.

But I mean, people will buy it.

People buy MM cases so...

:O

MM cases are a whole different monster than this. MM has a ton more room and is made specifically for water cooling set ups.

There is no otherway i can fit all my junk inside 1 case...

3 loops... 4 radiators... 6 pumps...

Impossible i tell you... which is why im so hardpress on changing cases...
The only other option for me is an annodized black box... a steel unpainted box... a steel plastic box.... but u get the point...

 

[isawthedevil]

looks great.

 

[QueBert]

:O



There is no otherway i can fit all my junk inside 1 case...

3 loops... 4 radiators... 6 pumps...

Impossible i tell you... which is why im so hardpress on changing cases...
The only other option for me is an annodized black box... a steel unpainted box... a steel plastic box.... but u get the point...

You could probably fit all that AND this EVGA case in a MM and still have a bit of room

 

[aigomorla]

You could probably fit all that AND this EVGA case in a MM and still have a bit of room

most definitely...

 

[QueBert]

Drove out to NCIX to pick up my case yesterday, when I got home and opened the box and looked at it I said oh my god this case is beautiful. After spending an hour "building" my system I thought oh my god I want to stab somebody in the face!

I know this case is small, I knew the exact dimensions, but actual hands on, it feels smallee than I could imagine. 1st ARGH - my video card's (7950) almost too long. It fits, but just barely. And I couldn't get it in with the MB in, the PSU cables, especially the 24 pin were just i the way with seemingly no where to move them out the way

2nd ARGH - getting my MB in here was a damn chore, I've built 100's of computers it shouldn't be this hard to do simple shit lol.

3rd ARGH, I forgot to plug in the 24 pin and with the heatsink, it was pretty much impossible for my fat ass fingers.

4th ARGH - not related to this case. Intel Push Pin's - I want to be in a no holds bared fight with whoever came up with this idea for mounting. I also want the same fight with every perosn at Intel who tested and okay'ed this. And I want to fight everyone at Cooler Master who okay'ed the box saying "easy installation"

5th ARGH - my video card doesn't work, not EVGA's fault.

6th ARGH - Asrock has a PCI-E release button thingy for the slot. Needless to say it too me probably 20 minutes to physically get the card out so I can box it up and RMA it. I haven't tried to power on the system since, I wouldn't be surprised if I broke something forcing the board out. You're not going to get a MB any decent sized video card out without removing the card.

7th ARGH - there are some scratches on the window, not big and not super noticable unless you're looking close. But for $180 I expect better quanity here.

8 ARGH - Panasonic Slot Loading BluRay drive wasn't cheap. I know it's not a required component, but I wanted an optical drive.

9 ARGH - 5.5" heatsink height, I knew this before buying it, but I never really thought about what 5'5 = for heatsinks. Basically 92mm or smaller for tower ones. There aren't many good choices for non 120mm offerings here.

good points

it's so sexy, it's so small, it's still fairly heavy.
PSU's surprisingly quiet, but I haven't heard it running at close to full load yet. I was expecting it to WOOOOOOOO some even when the system's idling, it doesn't though.
top 2 fans are fairly quiet - I'll probably be replacing them with Cougar ones though.
has tubes in the back for hoses so you can use an external water cooling setup.

 

[QueBert]

I want to love this case, I really really do. I don't think I'm going to be able to deal with the PSU fan though. When I'm doing regular shit, it's wonderfully quiet. But when I play a game my speakers are way up - UH OH! it becomes loud as hell. Tonight I was watching a 1080p Youtube video, I took my headhphones off to go get a drink and it seemed as as loud as when I was gaming. A 1080p video shouldn't tax a CPU enough to make the PSU need to kick the fan into high gear. I can't think of any other reason though, because I wasn't doing shit else at the time.

I watch movies on my PC, and if it'll get this loud every time it won't really be bearable. I know this is a fault of the server style PSU so I'm not knocking on EVGA. But, I guess I just was assuming they had somehow magically figured out how to make this one work better. With that said, I'm still surprised at just how easy it seems to be to get it to where it revs up. Maybe replacing the stock 120mm fans with better ones would help, but I'm not exactly sure how much - if it would at all. The fans are blowing out, maybe switching them to intake would help things here?

I don't want to ditch the case already, but I'm at a loss for a single thing I can do here outside of just dealing with the whoooshing of it's fan when I do much of anything. This case would be wonderful for people who only surfed the web and did basic shit, but the problem is this case is aimed at enthusiasts. And we push our systems. And I'm not anal about my PC being quiet, I can put up with some noise, I've never had what I'd call a silent PC.

 

[lehtv]

Does the case support any other PSU?

 

[Aikouka]

I want to love this case, I really really do. I don't think I'm going to be able to deal with the PSU fan though. When I'm doing regular shit, it's wonderfully quiet. But when I play a game my speakers are way up - UH OH! it becomes loud as hell. Tonight I was watching a 1080p Youtube video, I took my headhphones off to go get a drink and it seemed as as loud as when I was gaming. A 1080p video shouldn't tax a CPU enough to make the PSU need to kick the fan into high gear. I can't think of any other reason though, because I wasn't doing shit else at the time.

It's probably your GPU causing the extra power drain not your CPU. I notice a rather large jump in power usage (according to my UPS) when playing videos on YouTube, and if I had to guess, it's either from Flash's GPU acceleration or simply using the GPU to decode h.264. Although, you'd think the latter would be more efficient.

 

[QueBert]

Does the case support any other PSU?

I don't think this is a stamdatd server PSU, it's skinny like one, but seems shorter. Not 100% sure because I've never actually had my hands on a server one. Either way, Server PSU's aren't meant to be quiet, as far as that goes this is probably going to be better than any other PSU that might fit. Server ones are louder.

It's probably your GPU causing the extra power drain not your CPU. I notice a rather large jump in power usage (according to my UPS) when playing videos on YouTube, and if I had to guess, it's either from Flash's GPU acceleration or simply using the GPU to decode h.264. Although, you'd think the latter would be more efficient.

I didn't think about it, but yeah flash probably isn't the best thing to use to test something like this because it's such a resource hog. I'll try playing a BluRay or something tonight. If I can't manage to get the fan to a lower level I'm going to have to sell this and go to another case.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

Pics?

 

[QueBert]

Pics?

I'll take some pics, but I'm ordering a different case tomorrow. It's a shame about the fan because this is such a beautiful case. I will miss it, but I won't miss the fan revving up randomly and blowing like a hair dryer when I'm gaming,

 

[QueBert]

Since I was so hard on this case and maybe some people who are Googling it will read this and be swayed I have an update. It doesn't make any sense to me, but the fan didn't rev up at all since I've been playing games today. Don't know exactly how to explain it, but after 30 minutes of Far Cry 3 it's still fairly quiet, no more loud than it was when I was just surfing the web a few hours ago. I think atm my heatsink fan's the loudest thing in the case.

From my week with it I was certain the PSU fan was out of control loud when under a heavy load. But it appears I was wrong. I'm probably still going to use the Silverstone FT02S I ordered today due to wanting more space. But my main grevence with this case might have been a non issue.

 

[atm743]

I love my Prodigy, but I don't see it as an iTX case. I know technically it is, but it's ginormous for iTX. Here's a pic of both

The Prodigy's beautiful but the size is just too big if you want a case that's truly small. I read a few more reviews and they said the PSU in the Hadron is whisper quiet.

should be good for getting air flow to the video card.

o wow. i didnt think it was that much smaller to the prodigy cases. i've always wanted to build a mini gaming rig. just never liked the idea of having a hot video card in a small space. dont want its heat also heating up the cpu.