28 Sort By Lowest Price Case Review: DIYPC Zondda-O
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Date: 2020-05-06
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Comments and reviews: 10
MaddnessAxon
For the price, you could drill out the rivets, for free, and drill for free new fan mounting holes, freeing the front of the case for better cooling. find some free salvage fans, and make it work. This is a case for me, not for you. I would also jigsaw the front ventilated ares, pound out the front mounting racks you have used as a cover for the ventilated. I could spend 2 on split tubing to make custom grommets, drop the back panel for more cutout modding, and simply turn the case so only the window side shows. My current case is such a monster. I am on disability, so I have no extra money, and I literally have to make do. Note! this is not a negative critique, just talking about things that seem impossible, because you have 30 cases and an endless supply of parts. I have a case which will be in its 12th year, the start button is two wires, the front plastic fell apart 5 years ago, and the same exact front/hard/optical drive pillars. I have saved money over the past year, and finally have an upgrade! ASRock B450M PRO4-F, Ryzen 5 3600, 16 gigs Ryzen ready memory, and a Gamdias Athena Case. It does not have the front glass, but a mesh front with three fans in it, I will put one in the back, cut out any air flow reducing filters, and be happy to have a case I can turn on with a button. TLDR; Cheap cases like this work wonders for super poor people, who absolutely adore your in depth tech reviews, Steve.
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For the price, you could drill out the rivets, for free, and drill for free new fan mounting holes, freeing the front of the case for better cooling. find some free salvage fans, and make it work. This is a case for me, not for you. I would also jigsaw the front ventilated ares, pound out the front mounting racks you have used as a cover for the ventilated. I could spend 2 on split tubing to make custom grommets, drop the back panel for more cutout modding, and simply turn the case so only the window side shows. My current case is such a monster. I am on disability, so I have no extra money, and I literally have to make do. Note! this is not a negative critique, just talking about things that seem impossible, because you have 30 cases and an endless supply of parts. I have a case which will be in its 12th year, the start button is two wires, the front plastic fell apart 5 years ago, and the same exact front/hard/optical drive pillars. I have saved money over the past year, and finally have an upgrade! ASRock B450M PRO4-F, Ryzen 5 3600, 16 gigs Ryzen ready memory, and a Gamdias Athena Case. It does not have the front glass, but a mesh front with three fans in it, I will put one in the back, cut out any air flow reducing filters, and be happy to have a case I can turn on with a button. TLDR; Cheap cases like this work wonders for super poor people, who absolutely adore your in depth tech reviews, Steve.
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volkswagenginetta
steve i think you are looking at this wrong for a budget build, its not a situation of i don't have the extra 10 dollars, its a situation of if i get a 50 dollar case like the fractal design focus G now my gpu budget is 65 dollars instead of 80 or my cpu budget is now only 75 instead of 90. Everything can be done as for 10 dollars more or for 20 dollars more but that ends up being the case for every part. Somewhere you gotta draw a line where you cut corners in extreme budget builds. Which one is gonna be able to make me run pubg for 400 dollars? A cheap case with acceptable thermals but went from a ryzen 3 1200 to a ryzen 5 1600 af, or going from an rx 560 to a rx 570? Or is the one with marginally better temps and slightly better looking case going to be that much better with a cpu that is much weaker or gpu much weaker? Cable routing doesn't increase fps and if thermals are decent (especially with low tdp watt parts which is usually what are in budget builds) then they are going to perform worse.
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steve i think you are looking at this wrong for a budget build, its not a situation of i don't have the extra 10 dollars, its a situation of if i get a 50 dollar case like the fractal design focus G now my gpu budget is 65 dollars instead of 80 or my cpu budget is now only 75 instead of 90. Everything can be done as for 10 dollars more or for 20 dollars more but that ends up being the case for every part. Somewhere you gotta draw a line where you cut corners in extreme budget builds. Which one is gonna be able to make me run pubg for 400 dollars? A cheap case with acceptable thermals but went from a ryzen 3 1200 to a ryzen 5 1600 af, or going from an rx 560 to a rx 570? Or is the one with marginally better temps and slightly better looking case going to be that much better with a cpu that is much weaker or gpu much weaker? Cable routing doesn't increase fps and if thermals are decent (especially with low tdp watt parts which is usually what are in budget builds) then they are going to perform worse.
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Richard
Not that I'm suggesting anyone buy it, but I wonder how drilling out the drive cage rivets would change it's thermals. If they took the same internal case tooling, ditched all the drive bays and included one of each 3. 5 and 2. 5 mounts on the bottom of the case, full mesh front and fan rails for 3x140mm, yes, there'd be tooling costs for the front and new drive bay, but significantly less material used and shipping weight. It would still be flimsy, have no cable management, but could knock it out of the park on thermals and still come in at the absolute rock bottom price. As an aside, I'm fairly certain I had a prebuilt (perhaps Acer) that had identical internals maybe 8 or 10 years ago, I wonder if they buy old tooling or are just eating old stock.
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Not that I'm suggesting anyone buy it, but I wonder how drilling out the drive cage rivets would change it's thermals. If they took the same internal case tooling, ditched all the drive bays and included one of each 3. 5 and 2. 5 mounts on the bottom of the case, full mesh front and fan rails for 3x140mm, yes, there'd be tooling costs for the front and new drive bay, but significantly less material used and shipping weight. It would still be flimsy, have no cable management, but could knock it out of the park on thermals and still come in at the absolute rock bottom price. As an aside, I'm fairly certain I had a prebuilt (perhaps Acer) that had identical internals maybe 8 or 10 years ago, I wonder if they buy old tooling or are just eating old stock.
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Jimster480
why review this? DIYPC has so many good cases that are also super affordable. If you went through and reviewed some of the other cases in their lineup I would recon you would find that most of the new high end cooling cases are really no better. I've built many client machines with these cases over the years and the thermals have always been good, sometimes even better than my fancier cases that I had on my own desktops at the time. Other cheap cases like the thermaltake Versa are extremely good especially when paired with a set of Arctic PWM fans from Amazon (yes not free, but often better than anything you get at a 50 price tier without adding additional fans.
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why review this? DIYPC has so many good cases that are also super affordable. If you went through and reviewed some of the other cases in their lineup I would recon you would find that most of the new high end cooling cases are really no better. I've built many client machines with these cases over the years and the thermals have always been good, sometimes even better than my fancier cases that I had on my own desktops at the time. Other cheap cases like the thermaltake Versa are extremely good especially when paired with a set of Arctic PWM fans from Amazon (yes not free, but often better than anything you get at a 50 price tier without adding additional fans.
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sleepy
reason #1 for Gamers Nexus to not review bottom barrel budget cases: now they are 39 and out of stock EDIT: before anybosy gets upset that I said bottom barrel, I built my current system last year in a Rosewill Ranger-M I paid 25 for, and its a Ryzen 3 1200 with 16GB of XPG Z! ( 60) on a GB B450M with a refurbed powercolor R9 380 I picked up for a miraculous 70, which was 10 under my GPU budget, and a 50 600 watt EVGA bronze B1. its a real budget monstrosity and I love it. Sure, I had to put my old FX6300 4000RPM fan in teh front for cooling, but it works well at 2000RPM staying under 65C on CPU and GPU
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reason #1 for Gamers Nexus to not review bottom barrel budget cases: now they are 39 and out of stock EDIT: before anybosy gets upset that I said bottom barrel, I built my current system last year in a Rosewill Ranger-M I paid 25 for, and its a Ryzen 3 1200 with 16GB of XPG Z! ( 60) on a GB B450M with a refurbed powercolor R9 380 I picked up for a miraculous 70, which was 10 under my GPU budget, and a 50 600 watt EVGA bronze B1. its a real budget monstrosity and I love it. Sure, I had to put my old FX6300 4000RPM fan in teh front for cooling, but it works well at 2000RPM staying under 65C on CPU and GPU
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fredEVOIX
left side fan cases give the best GPU temps, zero doubt about that, the so called airflow of closed side panels cases is really zero in the rear lower under gpu square, zero airflow it's a hot pocket that never cools and that's what your non-wc gpu sucks in to cool itself, the only fix for that is either cases with bottom fans (and the psu in a separate compartment) or a side fan like this case, all the other cases are garbage, if you want an ultimate cooling case buy something with a plexi window/normal panel cut it and install a 200mm side fan blowing straight onto the gpu/chipset controller
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left side fan cases give the best GPU temps, zero doubt about that, the so called airflow of closed side panels cases is really zero in the rear lower under gpu square, zero airflow it's a hot pocket that never cools and that's what your non-wc gpu sucks in to cool itself, the only fix for that is either cases with bottom fans (and the psu in a separate compartment) or a side fan like this case, all the other cases are garbage, if you want an ultimate cooling case buy something with a plexi window/normal panel cut it and install a 200mm side fan blowing straight onto the gpu/chipset controller
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SciPunk215
Before judging a case, we need to start by asking a question. What is the purpose of a computer case? The answer is simple. it is to hide the ugly components (yes, your components are ugly. stop pretending they're beautiful, and to keep dust and falling objects off those components. Unfortunately, the opaque material that hides and protects your components also blocks air. So we compensate by using fans to blow air across those components. which brings dust onto them. Thus the vicious cycle. So when seek the optimal balance between protection and air flow. and of course price.
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Before judging a case, we need to start by asking a question. What is the purpose of a computer case? The answer is simple. it is to hide the ugly components (yes, your components are ugly. stop pretending they're beautiful, and to keep dust and falling objects off those components. Unfortunately, the opaque material that hides and protects your components also blocks air. So we compensate by using fans to blow air across those components. which brings dust onto them. Thus the vicious cycle. So when seek the optimal balance between protection and air flow. and of course price.
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Kris
My son bought this very case last Summer. He really does not have many issues with CPU thermals as you are. I have been building PC's since the late 80's ( before you were born or even into this ) and have used a wide variety of Beige Bettys to monster cases of the this day. Being in IT exposes you to so many situations and system configs that it makes it hard at times to totally say yes or no to how some builds are performed. BTW: radiation shielding is another term for RF shielding when it comes to computing devices ( I am an electronics tech as well. Everything emits RF signals.
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My son bought this very case last Summer. He really does not have many issues with CPU thermals as you are. I have been building PC's since the late 80's ( before you were born or even into this ) and have used a wide variety of Beige Bettys to monster cases of the this day. Being in IT exposes you to so many situations and system configs that it makes it hard at times to totally say yes or no to how some builds are performed. BTW: radiation shielding is another term for RF shielding when it comes to computing devices ( I am an electronics tech as well. Everything emits RF signals.
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John
Honestly there are MILLIONS of low spec PCs in the world that really don't need anything special case wise for cooling performance. They could be put into a solid box with a few vent holes and still work just fine. I know it seems odd for this audience but these cheap as dirt cases DO serve a niche and it isn't just people trying to trim on a budget, but more installation style PCs like the ones you DON'T see say running a buildings EnterPhone or security system, or a point of sale terminal, or other such use cases. They generally don't have anything but a 15 year CPU with an iGPU.
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Honestly there are MILLIONS of low spec PCs in the world that really don't need anything special case wise for cooling performance. They could be put into a solid box with a few vent holes and still work just fine. I know it seems odd for this audience but these cheap as dirt cases DO serve a niche and it isn't just people trying to trim on a budget, but more installation style PCs like the ones you DON'T see say running a buildings EnterPhone or security system, or a point of sale terminal, or other such use cases. They generally don't have anything but a 15 year CPU with an iGPU.
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SciPunk215
I like Gamers Nexus, and Steve is mostly correct with this review, imo. But I think people give cheap cases a bad rap for silly reasons, and some of that came out in this video. For example, why would you complain that a case is too flimsy? Or too light? Or it bends? What the hell are people doing with their computers that require the case to resist massive lateral forces? Or why would anybody judge a fan by how bendable it is? Bending a fan is NOT how you judge a fan. So why would anybody point that out as a flaw? These things are irrelevant.
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I like Gamers Nexus, and Steve is mostly correct with this review, imo. But I think people give cheap cases a bad rap for silly reasons, and some of that came out in this video. For example, why would you complain that a case is too flimsy? Or too light? Or it bends? What the hell are people doing with their computers that require the case to resist massive lateral forces? Or why would anybody judge a fan by how bendable it is? Bending a fan is NOT how you judge a fan. So why would anybody point that out as a flaw? These things are irrelevant.
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