The case

The secret to cooling is airflow, and the secret to a quiet PC is laminar flow. Thus, when choosing a chassis, you will ideally want to find one with large exhaust fans at least 80mm in size, but preferably 92 or 120mm. Chassis selection was actually one of the most time intensive portions of this project. We explored many options including products from Enermax, Chenbro, Yeong Yang (Gigacase), Soldam, Lian-Li, Coolermaster, and even Intel!

AMD System

We finally settled on the SuperMicro 742i-450 Server Chassis in the Opteron for its blend of good looks and design.

SuperMicro sells the cardboard box and foam alone for $29.00

View from the front

Heavy duty casters

This 47 lb. behemoth of a case has a depth of 24.2 inches! The extended length case was helpful since the Thunder K8W is a 12x13” extended ATX form factor, however this also improves cooling significantly. The SuperMicro case features a large 120mmx38mm exhaust fan and a 92 cm front fan. Thanks to the extended length design, the front intake fan is located behind the hard drives and provide excellent cooling through the separation of the drive bays and motherboard. The 5 1/4” drive bays are all true *bays* as opposed to simply face plates. You can mount hard drives to the 5 1/4" bay in the same manner you would a HDD cooler.

The drive bays…

… are actual bays!

Note how you would mount the HDD

The SuperMicro/Ablecom power supply that ships with the 742i-450 is an EPS12V 450W unit that has a proven track-record with SuperMicro’s server boards. No one’s 100% sure how much of the power supply is developed in house, but we’ve had excellent experience with it. Before you run out and buy the SuperMicro chassis however, don’t forget that EPS12V power supplies are not compatible with desktop boards without an optional adapter.

No airflow?

Actually, it’s an angled design