mrzmaster wrote on 2023-11-09, 22:59:
VivienM wrote on 2023-11-09, 21:41:
I'm not sure if there's really anything I can tell you - it is a very big case (much bigger/roomier than the cases I had in the early-mid 2000s, that's for sure) and the drive bays are at the very top, so... the question really is where the connectors on your motherboard/PCI cards are going to be. I actually wonder if the drive bays at the bottom could be easier, for example if one of your ribbon cables is going to an expansion card in the bottom-most slot.
It sounds like the R5 is truly a full size ATX case, maybe more case than I need for this rig.
It's not full-sized in the 1990s sense (which was narrow and taaaaaaaaaall), it's just... big. And I would put it to you this way: a case in the 1990s or most cases in the first half of the 2000s, at least, was designed around component placement. So, for example, you have a 5.25" bay, you need a little metal frame thingy around it, then you need a bezel and that's the width of your case.
The Define R5, and probably most other similar cases, is designed around cooling. If making the case 1 or 2cm wider lets them give you fan mounts for 140mm fans instead of 120mm fans, for example, then they will do it. If making the case 2cm deeper lets you fit bigger AiOs, then the case is 2cm deeper. If by making the case 1cm taller, they get to fit two huge fans in front and 2 5.25" bays, that's what they'll do. Etc. So the net result is that it's more or less a mid-tower case, but in every dimension it's a couple cm more.
Basically, this all dates back to the backlash in the mid-2000s when people were trying to cool Hotbursts in old-fashioned cases where you just got some 80/92mm fan mounts where there just happened to be space. And those machines ran stupidly loud (I had a Deleron with an Intel stock cooler in some stupid Antec case... if the room temperature got a little high, the CPU fan would run at 5000+ RPM, and I would literally have to open the windows in the winter to lower the room temperature enough to get that stock cooler down to 3000RPM or less. (Before anyone asks, yes, after a year or two of that, I ended up buying a Zalman HSF that was a lot better... and also ran at a fixed speed.). And GPUs, in particular, were starting to rapidly increase in heat output at that time. So... eventually, the case industry got shamed into making cases with huuuuuuuuuge numbers of fan openings for giant fans.
And I will say this for the Define R5 - with a Noctua cooler instead of the Intel stock one, and... I forget how many big fans... at least two in the front, one in the back, none on the top... that case is absurdly, absurdly quiet.
If you're going for authentic late 1990s computer sounds, THAT is certainly not the case for you 😀