(2012-08-18, 00:20)Palmer Wrote: Thanks a lot for the reply bluray. Appreciate all the assistance. This will be my main living room htpc for browsing internet, downloading videos, streaming videos etc This case should just fit on the stand with everything else. Ill stick with the A6-3500 and guess ill look into a better cpu fan for quiet coolingv also that will fit.
With a bit more detail:
I'm running a system with that case, and an A6-3500 overclocked to 2.5ghz (and a substantial GPU overclock as well, though I can't remember the specific speed offhand). I've got a DVD player, an 80gb laptop hard drive as a system drive, and 2 2tb hard drives. I've got a 120mm fan in the side drive bay as recommended in the OP, and the hard drives stacked inside with double sided foam tape.
Heat is an issue, but it's manageable. The problem is the built in PSU air intake covers half the CPU fan air intake, resulting in a massive air pressure drop at the CPU heat sink, and thus very poor cooling. Putting in a better, larger (but of course low profile) cooler such as noted in the OP would likely correct this. I never got around to buying one (not sure why, to be honest).
I found the single biggest change I made to the recommended build was ripping out the included power supply entirely. I'm replacing it with a picoPSU (read: Laptop power brick) but I need to get a new one shipped. I ordered one from Shortcircuit, but it never arrived. In the mean time, I've just been running the included power supply outside the case, and doing so took me from occasionally overheating at stock clocks to running perfectly smoothly with my CPU fan never speeding up above 40% with a pretty substantial overclock.
I can't begin to recommend a picoPSU enough, though. The included power supply isn't noisy, but it's not silent either. PicoPSU's are far more energy efficient (= cheaper to run!) and are absolutely silent. Also, that opened room in your case vastly improves airflow, which just makes everything work so much better.
My two bits anyways.