Psycho_McCrazy
Disciple
Over the past two decades or so, I have always used standing tower PC cases (as has been the general trend, horizontal desk-tops went out of vogue with 486s or so...) varying from the local no-brand stuff, thru Cooler Master Centurion 530, Antec 300 to my favorite and current Full-ATX tower, the Cooler Master HAF932. I've had it for a well over a decade now, and it has performed admirably, housing four successive builds for me.
My current build in this tower is a 2700x on an x570 Unify and I do plan to upgrade this build in the future to the compatible 5000 series Ryzens, probably a high core count SKU. At that time, I also wish to use a Big Beefy CPU Cooler. However tempting and cool looking water-cooling may be, I feel it not for me.
Also, my ageing GTX 970 (which I got my hands on in 2019, used, and at an extremely great price) is due for an upgrade to a powerful modern GPU to drive my 2160p60 OLED or 1440p144 display in modern titles. While this will happen when the prices become more palatable, but it will, probably before this calendar year runs out. Am holding off playing a lot of modern demanding titles pending this GPU upgrade.
With the above planned heavy CPU cooler and Big-FGPU, and my long term worry about cantilever loads hanging off the Motherboard, I have been thinking that moving to a CPU case where the motherboard is horizontal may be a suitable proposition.
While I am aware of two cases that support full ATX motherboards in horizontal orientation: Cooler Master HAF XB and Thermaltake Level 20 XT (always out of stock though), are these the correct / suitable choice? Are any better options available?
Or should I just hacksaw the interiors of my older Centurion case and fabricate / build up a custom Horizontal case for myself?
My current build in this tower is a 2700x on an x570 Unify and I do plan to upgrade this build in the future to the compatible 5000 series Ryzens, probably a high core count SKU. At that time, I also wish to use a Big Beefy CPU Cooler. However tempting and cool looking water-cooling may be, I feel it not for me.
Also, my ageing GTX 970 (which I got my hands on in 2019, used, and at an extremely great price) is due for an upgrade to a powerful modern GPU to drive my 2160p60 OLED or 1440p144 display in modern titles. While this will happen when the prices become more palatable, but it will, probably before this calendar year runs out. Am holding off playing a lot of modern demanding titles pending this GPU upgrade.
With the above planned heavy CPU cooler and Big-FGPU, and my long term worry about cantilever loads hanging off the Motherboard, I have been thinking that moving to a CPU case where the motherboard is horizontal may be a suitable proposition.
While I am aware of two cases that support full ATX motherboards in horizontal orientation: Cooler Master HAF XB and Thermaltake Level 20 XT (always out of stock though), are these the correct / suitable choice? Are any better options available?
Or should I just hacksaw the interiors of my older Centurion case and fabricate / build up a custom Horizontal case for myself?
. I used Antec 200, the little brother of your Antec, for many years turned on its side, even though it was not "designed" to be horizontal. I prefer it this way also because the back side of the case is the most useful, and when vertically oriented, the back side typically gets difficult to access. People might think the back side is ugly, but I don't mind because it is useful - the case stayed nicely with its feet facing me, 2 feet below my desk level and 2 feet above the ground level. Power on, reset buttons are difficult to press, but most of the time I just put it to sleep and it wakes up on moving the mouse / hitting a key so don't need the buttons. As for USB ports, they were USB 2.0, I have a USB 3.0 hub on the desk, connected to one of the back side USB 3.0 ports in the motherboard.