Hey, I'm a sucker for flashy stuff
But yeah, I also wanted the temp sensor diodes just to play around with, and I like the fan controllers and whatnot, not to mention it included a 500w PSU which wasn't an ANTEC (which are the best as you stated) but still is pretty nice. As you can see in my sig, I have some pretty nice gear in my system and I love to be able to peer inside every now and then and gaze upon the beautiful machinery within... (ok YES Im a dork lol...). I hear ya on the case thing though... I know people who have also made it their priority to get a pimpin case when their components are severely lacking.
[sarcasm]Yeah that window is REAL nice to show off your Pentium 3...[/sarcasm]
Damn noobs.
Having a case with a blowhole fan is also nice to deal with that hotspot up near the PSU, though, its not really that big of an issue because most components up there aren't too heat-sensitive.
Right now, I'm building a system for my bro out of a 2.4 Celeron and 512 meg PC3200 which will soon be acquiring from Rbstr
as well as a 9600 PRO. Not exactly the most pimping system, but I cannot afford to spend piles of money on the kid. This is really kinda a b-day present for him, and all I've had to do is spend $170 on it because other than the 2 items I'm getting from Rbstr (which is really a trade, I bought him a 2.8 P4, hes giving me the memory and celeron, as well as a couple case fans). I'm throwing it into a nice ANTEC case (they really do make great cases for cooling, not the best lookers but great for functionality).
Currently the poor kid is trying to game on a 1.3 Ghz P4 with 126 mb RDRAM and a Radeon 7000.
At least now he will be able to play PlanetSide and other games somewhat decently!
Edit-Vitter, I think you misunderstand, my case has a backlit LCD readout on the front of the case, which is connected to 2 temp diodes u can put wherever. I have one under the heatsink of my GPU, and one stuck onto my CPU heatsink right up next to the die (but not between the CPU and heatsink!). Its kinda cool, I mean I have to mentally add a few degrees to estimate the correct temperature (I usually add 10 C to what my CPU heatsink reads, because thats approximately what the temperature difference is between it and the die) and I usually add like 5 C to my GPU heatsink temp) its really just there for that "safe feeling" it gives me. I do a lot of OCing and benchmarking and messing around so it's nice to have my approximate CPU temperature available "at-a-glance" (43 C... +10 = about 53 C... ok, I'm not in the redzone yet... MORE VOLTAGE! :P).
Also the case has 3 built-in fan speed controllers, which I usually leave cranked all the way up when I'm gaming (I usually play with headphones on so noise isn't an issue). When I'm just internet browsing I usually crank them down. I have one controller knob set to my "vertical airflow" (Side and blowhole fan speeds), one to my "horizontal airflow" (front and back fan speeds) and one knob controls the speed of my PSU fan.
Love having the level of control it provides me. Its also nice because in the winter my father is a bit stingy on heating, so the house is like 55 degrees F (frickin cold!). That time of year I can usually game just fine with my fans down all the way lol, (granted, I'm usually wearing about 4 sweaters myself). Towards summer though (again, my father says that AC hurts our power bill
) so I have to crank those fans all the way up, and even drop my OC a little bit. This is why I'm really dying to get a nice new heatsink... ::looks longingly at the Thermaltake PIPE-101::
^Wow... long post... kudos to anyone who actually reads all of it
Its so sad... I could talk computers all day...