Praises? Punches? Questions?

It's ugly, expensive (as in, I can build a whole system for less), and I can't overclock with it. It's a gimmick at best. Zalman has drunk a little too much of their own Kool-Aid I think.

LOL, it's not made for the overclocking market, of course. It's made for those who value silence from their PCs more than they value extra MHz of speed. I definitely wouldn't recommend it as a gaming PC or a base for overclocking. Absolutely not! Overclocking is a different market completely, apples and oranges and all that.

Also, it's not made for those on strict budgets. What we've found is that the people who are buying it at the moment are people for whom a extra thousand dollars is NOT a problem provided they get exactly what they want. And that, obviously, is a niche market for a niche product.

I just think Zalman took a good thing they were doing, and went way beyond. Their noiseless heatsinks? Awesome. Noiseless PSU? Not great, but decent. This... thing? As you pointed out, you can't even really set up a full out system in it. It seems like this deserved a lot more time in the incubator before being tossed on market. You can do just as quiet for a lot cheaper. Zalman should feel like they are stealing money from anyone who buys this.

I don't know if it could spend any more time in the incubator (Aren't incubators hot places anyway? ). But, I see your point about price. Bear in mind that PC parts invariably drop in price. So, would people flock to buy it at $900? $500? $200? Early adopters are the ones who don't mind paying the vanity premium to cover R & D costs. Others call it "theft" till the price drops to what they are comfortable paying

Yeah, it is too expensive, but not by much.

First of all nobody buy this case, when i first so it i was shocked. Looks like a big electrical transformer. The only place this will look nice is covered by a curtain. Its a waste, dont buy this crap, if u want quiet, then go for the lian li 1100 case, put the phantom psu in it, take the front fan offm and use a danger den water cooled kit for the video cards, cpu, and chipset. Plus the whole case is insulated, and youll only have one fan from the radaiotor at the back, thats about 20db. QUIET as u can get. HAHAH, ZAlman aint got nothing on this setup, plus u save like $1000 dollars. Zalman ur nothing but a cheap company. HAH

let's calculate:

lian li 1100: $230
phantom 500 fanless: $180 (or, better, watercooled silentmaxx 500: $270)
zalman reserator 2: $320

total: $730 to $820.

you definitely DON'T save much. plus, you'll still have to worry about circulation inside the case, so you'll need at least one fan. and despite its weight, a single unit is definitely more mobile than a case with a separate water cooling unit. looks are subjective, of course, but for me zalman tnn design wins hands down over any lian li.

To me as a guy with an intermediate knowledge of computers Zalman case is a bit unusual solution so I need to hear an opinion of the current owners. Did it really do the job? Is it absolutely quiet. Does the case block the sound from hard drive and what about some small fans on video card and sound blaster card?
Did you guys manage to connect the heat sinks to them?

I would be willing to pay $700.00 for the quiet environment so I am kind of waiting for this “price drop”, but according to Zalman tech support I will have to buy another motherboard that will be compatible with the case. Bye bye to another $150.00 :'(

You can remove the video card fan and connect the GPU to the case body via heatpipes. There is no fan on soundcards as far as I know. Most motherboards are suitable. First try your motherboard before buying a new one. The hard disk comes with shoes/rubber bushes to prevent contact of the hard disk with the metal of the body. The spin noise from the hard disk is the ONLY thing you'll hear so choose a quiet hard disk. Good luck.

I have the Zalman Resonater water cooler tower with my machine. I paid about $280 to remove the noise from my home office, and it did a really fine job. I was able to remove most of the extra fans from the inside of the PC. I use a CPU waterblock, a VGA water block, and a Hard Drive Water block. I find that as I pull in less air with big fans, I also pull in less dust and crap. The only fan I can hear is the Power Supply fan. I will be getting a water cooled powersupply to replace that soon as well. Since I rely on the water I blocked off the fan intakes on the front of the case with closed cell foam, witch makes it almost impossible to hear the hard drives. I have a few temp sensors in the case, and everything (even ambient air) is staying nice and chilly. I have had so much luck with the resonater that I am more than willing to go the next step on the next machine for a completely silent machine. Would be great for a media machine in my TV stack, since it would make less noise than a DVD player.
Bring it on.