First Watercooling Loop

Cases

Cases are a huge subject. I’m not even going to go into any of the details and instead choose a case that is easy to work with and has potential to grow without being ridiculous. It is however not cheap and there are decent cheap options so we will eventually make a case guide too so that there are more options for every budget.

A lot of people are used to cheap cases because budget cases can do everything the air cooler needs. However water coolers tend to need more specialist cases and tend to have a bigger budget. The CaseLabs SM8 is a large (by normal standards) full ATX tower case that is very flexible and can house a lot of water cooling parts. It comes in different colors, can be configured as normal or reverse ATX and has a huge amount of accessories that make your imagination the limit. It is however expensive by “normal” standards particularly when you factor in tax and shipping (even more if you’re outside the US). However it’s made in the US out of almost full aluminum and will last a very long time. It’s extremely water cooling friendly and you’re unlikely to run into issues such as clearances only for small radiators, or tight tubing routing or insufficient cable management space.