New PC Build - Help me pick a case for an adult non gamer.

[liquidretro]

Budget (including currency): $200 ish USD for the case
Country: USA
Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Productivity (Fusion360, Slicers, Lightroom, Photoshop, Video Editing, and casual gaming)
Other details:

I'm building a new system, and have a lot of things bought or picked out, but struggling to finish things off. Here is the build so far https://pcpartpicker.com/list/kp3n6Q

Case: My tower sits to the left of my desk, so windows and LED's are not important. Not a big gamer so I have never been super into all the LED's etc, a few might be nice but I want the ability to shut them off too. I love the look of the Fractal Designs North XL case (no window), it's on the expensive side but doable. It's just more sophisticated and looks like a piece of furniture than so many of the cases out there. My hold ups are that it only has space for 2x 3.5" hard drives natively. I can't find any accounts of anyone modifying it to include more or anything either. 2 is the bare minimum for me, and I would prefer up to 4 probably, ideally with some air flow over them to keep the drives cool. In an ideal world it might have space for a 5.25" optical drive too but I can live without this and get an external USB drive if I end up needing it. Does Anyone know of ways people are doing this (adding 3.5" storage to the North XL) or another similar case I should look at?

Other things I am looking at/considering
Fractal Designs Torrent - Still a 2x 3.5" drive limit
Fractal Designs Meshify XL - Plenty of drive space, can't get off Amazon quickly but can order from elsewhere. Don't like the look as well but it would do.
Phanteks Enthoo Pro 2 - Updated version of what I'm using now. It's fine, will do everything I ask of it, but I'm looking for something different looking I think ideally.
Antec Flux Pro - Has wood, although not as attractive, has a window (Ok but not ideal), Has room for 4 drives, and is available (although delivers later than I would like ideally). This would do ok but for the money I would prefer the North XL)

GPU: I decided to pickup a used 2080 or 3080 card that I'm currently shopping for. I have 1080P monitors right now with intentions to upgrade at some point in 2025 and I figure I can get a new card then if I need to. I'm pretty shocked at how crazy GPU prices have gotten since I last built a system probably 7 years ago.

CPU Cooler: I think I want to go with an AIO water cooler, I'm looking to keep the build quite, and cool, and I have read AIO can be better for longer duration thermal loads like rendering. I'm open to suggestions here on what I should get, LED's are not important to me, noise and performance is. Any suggestions? If I'm making a terrible decision here and should go with an air cooler, tell me why and what I should go for instead.

PSU: Did I pick a good one? I want to oversize it, give me room for a different GPU down the road, and I think they tend to last longer if they are rated for more than your actually using. I'm willing to spend a little more here to get better quality and effecenicy I think it's worth it in a PSU.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[PHolder]

A case serves three roles. 1. it protects your gear from damage and heat 2. it provides connectors you expect to use (front audio jacks or USB jacks for example) 3. It shows your style and personality.

For the reason of #3, it's really pointless to ask someone else's opinion on your style and personality. Focusing on #1 I recommend you watch some reviews from Steve at Gamers Nexus on YouTube.

 

[Darcon]

You asked for opinions:

I love the compatible case feature on PC Part Picker, you can select from the motherboard screen. Then use the sliders on the side to set your minimum internal drive bays to 4, and see what you get.

I like the Phanteks case I built my kids computers in so much I got one for myself. The Enthoo Pro 2 was going to be my choice as it has 11 internal bays...

Trying to change the form from the Phanteks, I selected Mid-Tower instead of full tower, and the ones the YouTube videos (Jay, Linus, Dawid) pick are on top. NZXT H9 Flow and Corsair 5000D Airflow. Set the right side to intake to keep the heat off of you and the top to exhaust, plenty of flow through the case.

Power supply is fine.

 

[AlanD]

Personally I tend to go for the simpler cases with plenty of expansion room. Something like

Fractal Design Define R5​

8 internal 3.5 bays, plus an external 5.25 bay.

 

[miquelfire]

I use Fractal Design's Define cases for my computers. I have both R6 (USB-C version) and R7. They come with some amount of drive bays, but you can buy more than what comes with it.

 

[liquidretro]

I use Fractal Design's Define cases for my computers. I have both R6 (USB-C version) and R7. They come with some amount of drive bays, but you can buy more than what comes with it.

I actually bought (and cancled) a Define 7 case. I like the looks of it and it met my drive requirements but after looking more at the reviews I got concerned about the airflow as several reviews suggested the front door when shut was pretty restrictive and did cause things to run hot. I ended up getting a Antec Flux Pro in black, so tell if that's a good decision or not but the reviews are good and it's similar in size to my current tower.

 

[PHolder]

I'm going to be a dissenter to the concept of a case with lots of HDD storage. (I suppose the obvious exception applies if you say edit lots of video or are building a special server like a local Steam caching server.) Spreading your data storage among your devices is just asking for a backup nightmare or a disaster (if you fail to do those backups.) I prefer to have as little extra storage in any PC and put the storage into a NAS that is one central device that I can invest my backup energy into. (RAID is not a backup BTW.)

In any case, the case I like the most of the cases I have is the Corsair 5000D. It has good [enough] airflow, good [enough] cable management and a fair amount of room to work in/with.

 

[liquidretro]

I'm going to be a dissenter to the concept of a case with lots of HDD storage. (I suppose the obvious exception applies if you say edit lots of video or are building a special server like a local Steam caching server.) Spreading your data storage among your devices is just asking for a backup nightmare or a disaster (if you fail to do those backups.) I prefer to have as little extra storage in any PC and put the storage into a NAS that is one central device that I can invest my backup energy into. (RAID is not a backup BTW.)

In any case, the case I like the most of the cases I have is the Corsair 5000D. It has good [enough] airflow, good [enough] cable management and a fair amount of room to work in/with.

I use Backblaze for backup currently, so that incentivizes me to keep things on the local machine. I have a NAS as another storage place for copies of important things and bulk storage of things I care less about losing. I should price out backing up the NAS again at a services like B2 but haven't yet, there is some duplication and the monthly cost I think between the two would be rather high.

I didn't think 3-4 hard drives were a crazy amount of storage these days for video editing and photographers especially in an ATX sized case, but it seems like a lot of cases are trending to have 2 3.5" mounts, a few 2.5" and many motherboards support 2x m.2 connectors too for onboard SSD's. I will have a 2TB SSD as the main system drive and likely purchase a slower 2+tb SSD down the line to fit my other m.2 slot.