That might be because I left out a critical word ("not") in my original statement.
To reiterate what I said and what Frag said, you cannot have "optimal" cooling AND "optimal" quietness at the same time in ANY case. One is always a trade off the other. And to that, the Corsair 330r would be best when optimal quietness is the goal.
That said, if not overclocking, not overloading the case with lots of HDDs and multiple graphics cards, I am sure the 300r will keep your components adequately cooled, quietly.
Well, again, research the specs to see if the specific aluminum case really is significantly lighter. You might find, as I noted above, with the Antec Eleven Hundred, it is only by a pound or two and that will pretty much be negated once you fill the case with components.
I note Frag's suggested Corsair only weighs 11.02 lbs and even the 330r weighs just 14.99lbs, a mere 1/2lb more than the all aluminum Lian Li PC-8E.
And to be sure, lightness does NOT suggest quality!
You can't count components into weight dummy. They always weight the same. And there is no way aluminium case will be as heavy as steel one. No way. Have you ever held justz the side panel of aluminium case and a steel one? Sure aluminium cases need more reinforcement since it's a softer material, but that will never add up to such weight as equally sized steel one.
If Lain Li V354 that I had was made of steel it would weight freaking 500 tons. It has really thick plates and yet it weights almost nothing.
And don't underestimate the cooling capabilities. I had same CPU as I have now stuffed in a TT Lanbox case, having low profile CPU cooler crammed underneath PSU and graphic card was HD5850 back then. And it worked perfectly fine. If 330R can't cool what I have now I'd be greatly disappointed. And I highly doubt I'll have problems with that...
Ok, got the case yesterday. The graphic card still has quite some space left width wise, so I should be fine in the future. However, I didn't expect it to be so cluttered at the exhaust fan on the rear side. It's so tight spaced the Antec H2O 920 radiator can only be placed in vertical position where in smaller V354 I was able to mount it horizontally!
Space behind motherboard is also pretty tight. Could be that my PSU still has a really fat main cable...
Top cover however, if left in place it lets tiny amount of air pass through the spaces around, but not much really. I have to slightly mod this to give it tiny bit more space. I've lifted it a bit and was still quiet, but air was getting through. I wonder why they haven't made the top cover in same way as the front one. Unrestricted airflow with noise barricade in a shape of top door.
What i hate the most is the fact it comes with some weird USB 3.0 connector that looks like 2x USB 2.0 merged into one massive connector that can't be fitted anywhere on my Rampage II Gene. Where with Lian Li I was able to simply connect USB 3.0 motherboard connectors to USB 2.0. Front USB's worked fine, they were simply USB 2.0 instead of 3.0. For this one I'll have to find some sort of adapter that converts this fat big connector into two USB 2.0 connectors...
I can already see potential with this case, although with few limitations...
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