Quote Originally Posted by Jack Sawyer View Post
Why would I not get the Storm Scout?


  • If in your next build you want to go the watercooling route, you cannot use the Scout without drilling into it.
  • It's internal 3.5" bays aren't even caddies, they're just "supports" in which you *most likely* put screws in the side of your hard drives and drive them in, and then you still got to connect the cabling etc.
  • Its front has only 5 5.25" bays, adecuate for just 6 additional hotswap hard drives with the additional required cage.
  • I highly doubt it has a toolless assembly.
  • I don't know (but would wager they didn't care about it) if the interior is devoid of sharp corners.
  • I'd still got to put money in it to get proper silent no-led fans.
  • There's no sound-deadening material applied to the sides of the cages, which means I'd have to go the DIY route.
  • It's 2012 and there are no USB3 ports anywhere to be found? It does have eSATA and firewire(which died recently)
  • Only Micro-ATX/ATX? No E-ATX, no SSI-CEB (so no bigger ASUS ROG series fit)?
  • It looks as if cable management will not be easy in this case, but I may be wrong .



The Storm Trooper is twice the price, but has all of these things covered to a t (no sound deadening though). The FT02 as well, except for the front bays of which it has exactly the same amount, but it costs three times as much. The TJ11 has all the things mentioned above and more (two 180mm Air Penetrator super silent fans standard) but costs 10 times as much as the Storm Scout. Each and every one of these cases look better as well, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Case in point (yay pun!): This is my current server case. In black, of course. I bought this in '04 for around $400, $200 for the case and the rest shipping and taxes. I stil have it, it's still solid, and it lasted me through at least 4 builds, including simply laying around empty when all I had was a laptop.

There is no discernible rust on the outside, I can sit on it and it retains its structural integrity, and I cannot complain about its performance cause everything is always cool in it, there is no rattling, no suspect vibration, no bent PCI Slots that all of a sudden don't fit, no suspect airflow, nothing.

I'm going to get rid of it though because I got tired of it, and I want me some front panel USB3 and eSATA. Other than that, I could still have this case for like another 10 years no problem.

For my next build, and when I think ahead, the Storm Scout is just a bad idea, if I can't afford better now I just hold off plans until I can. In the words of some old wise man: you get what you pay for. I expect to be with the same case for a long time, so I always splurge in this spot.
1. Watercooling? He's building a first time PC, not a sick overclocking setup. There is no need for watercooling unless you are overclocking, and it's far too high maintenance/technical for a first time builder.

2. He's not going to be using hotswap bays, ever. He's building a home PC, not a server. When would he ever need to hot swap a hard drive?

3. I doubt it has tool-less assembly either, but he's going to be building the PC once and then most likely not touching it again for 2 years. Tool-less assembly isn't worth $100.


I've got a case which is probably 6 or 7 years old with a rig that's ~2 years old. Sure, it doesn't make people go wow, but the case was cheap as hell and I have no need to go inside it. Would I like to get a new one at some point - sure. Is it something I'd spend money on instead of something else - no.

It sounds like you are taking what you want in a PC and telling bigred he should have it, rather than suggesting him things he'd benefit from having in his PC. 32GB of memory is so unnecessary - 16GB is way more than enough.

The fanless power supply is a waste of money if you're trying to keep the value down - any PSU with a 140mm fan will be basically silent, and you'll be able to get a 750W power supply for half the price. I wouldn't feel comfortable with a 500W power supply if he wanted to upgrade certain parts in the future.

Why doesn't he save $60 by getting a different motherboard? I can see no features he would ever use regularly enough which are worth a massive $100 extra.

Amazon.com: Gigabyte Intel Z77 LGA 1155 Dual UEFI BIOS ATX Motherboard GA-Z77-DS3H: Electronics


IMO, save $100 on the case, $100 on the motherboard, $80 on the power supply, $65 on the memory, $60 on the SSD (drop to 128GB here) bump the graphics card back up to the GTX 680 for $70 more, and you'll also have over $300 in your back pocket with a more powerful, stable, upgradable PC with the only features lost ones that you never would have taken advantage of in the first place