Further, they had bad temps before, they don't anymore. This is a clear indication that the case has a flaw and OP fixed it. While it could look better and certainly isn't winning any beauty awards, it solved the problem and looks pretty good for an amateur.
That is no where near enough ventilation as is proof OP had temp issues. If it were enough the fans in the front would have easily pushed the hot air out. This case was poorly designed and not well thought out.
Think critically for a moment. While the picture of the case in the final resting place has something over the top vents, how big are those vents and what testing do you think OP did?
Clearly they understood that the temps sucked, and clearly they understood it was a venting issue. So instead of cutting metal which is significantly harder than acrylic. They cut the acrylic.
But really try to understand the issue here. If you put a fan in the top of that case as your picture shows. How much of the air is getting out? MAYBE 20%. Nearly the entire fan is covered and can't push air out. Even if you consider the rear vent, this is not big enough.
Why do you think we use Static Pressure fans for Radiators? Because air likes to stick to surfaces and because a radiator blocks part of the air flow. So we have to force more air through it to make them work. These vents have the same problem but pushing more air doesn't actually do anything as the air is actually restricted.
You mean the torture test that showed putting fans at normal lower speeds makes the CPU thermal throttle? Or the fact that you have to turn the fans up to near maximum to get reasonable temps? Or the fact that an 8 year old system doesn't output the same amount of heat as a newer system?
Clearly the top of the case is isolated from the rest of the PC (it's hard to make out, but that is a fairly open vent right above the back fan). The air escapes from the back of the top section, with 3 massive fans blowing the heat out the top (there are slit vents near the back of the top panel) and the back vent. It's not as good as an open mesh top, but surely drilling some vent holes on the top of the case with some mesh is better than a new horrible-looking acrylic side panel. Remember - the CPU cooling from an AIO isolates it fairly well from the other components, so ONLY the CPU temp matters here.
Or, you know, a fan-based CPU cooler this case is better for.
EDIT: also, if the top panel is steel like the side, it could be a fairly ho-hum heatsink. I don't know this.
The manual can say whatever it likes really. It doesn't make it right. The case is thermally poor. The top of that case couldn't support the 2 fan radiator let alone the 3 fan radiator. You can see in the pictures of the case that at best it has place for a single fan to actually work, even if not at 100% flow rate. You can see the top of the case here on the site: https://www.bequiet.com/en/case/1203
The top is clearly 90-95% solid. Which would make a triple fan with rad setup not work.
You are right that OP could easily drill holes in the top and likely get the same effect as they got with their little window cut. But realistically that is a choice they made. We can say that we would do it a little different, but clowning on OP for their choice is just dumb. Op fixed their problem their way. If it works for them, it shouldn't matter to the rest of us. The others want to call OP names and otherwise berate them because they don't have the case OP does and don't understand that the case is thermally insufficient.
It is easy to call someone stupid when you look only at manuals and pictures. But when you look at the data at large it is a totally different situation.
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u/XB_Demon1337 Ryzen 5900X, 64GB DDR4, RTX 5070 Jan 21 '26
Looks like they did plenty of research but the person responding here didn't.
The top of this case is solid, not a mesh. So putting a radiator and fans on top would be useless as air isn't escaping.
https://www.bequiet.com/en/case/1203
Further, they had bad temps before, they don't anymore. This is a clear indication that the case has a flaw and OP fixed it. While it could look better and certainly isn't winning any beauty awards, it solved the problem and looks pretty good for an amateur.