MrBlack
Fledgling Freddie
- Joined
- Dec 24, 2003
- Messages
- 148
This is just a mini-review of this case. Some hardware sites have a serious tendency to waffle for 6 pages when it comes to product reviews. I'll try to stick to the useful information.
This is an expensive case for the features. It is pleasingly light, the entire chasis being hewn from the purest simmering (well brushed, anyway) aluminium; but what you get for the £95 you'll spend on it doesn't seem like a lot.
Access is pretty easy. Both side panels are secured with three thumb screws, some taking a screwdriver to loosen up, but that's no major problem. The Motherboard tray slides out of the back of the case after removing another 4 thumb screws. It sticks a bit and takes some working to get completely out; but after that it's a breeze to install the initial parts.
The rear blanking plates are also secured with thumbscrews, surprisingly enough. Standard ATX PSUs will fit in a cage at the top after affixing an adaptor plate to the back of the PSU. This cage got in the way of my ATX connector and generally obstructed me a little once the tray was re-inserted.
The drive bays take a back-to-basics approach. Simply two cut sheets of aluminium that you screw your 5.25" drives into and with helpful little ledges to rest your 3.5" drives on prior to screwing them in, as well. There's some useful dead space either side of the 3.5" rack for shoving loops of ribbon cable out of the way of the primary airflow routes, too.
The case's capacity belies its size somewhat. You can comfortably fit 4 hard drives in the rack, which extends right to the bottom of the case, giving each drive lots of space either side to allow for good airflow. There's room for 4 5.25" drives, too, although the motherboard tray obstructs the bottom two slots so that only shorter drives will fit. There's also a pair of external 3.5" bays. I've got two cd drives, 3 cd drives and a floppy drive in the front of this case without it feeling cramped at all. The case is quite deep for its height, which seems to make all the difference.
The front panel connector block provides a firewire, 2 USB and an audio block. behind a neat swinging door so as not to spoil the flush frontage. Power and HDD LEDs are both blue, which they just had to be, really. I'd feel conned if I'd spent nearly a ton and got boring plebby red and green ones.
Cooling is well catered for. The interal hard drive bays have 2 front mounted 60mm intake fans (molex connectors) blowing across them. There's a 60mm rear fan by the I/O panel (3-pin motherboard connector, usefully) and another 60mm molex fan at the top.
The general build quality is the best I've seen in a case. The side panels slide in easily, screw holes align perfectly and the front face looks clean and stylish, should you care about these things. The look is spoiled a little if, like me, you stuff crappy begie-fronted CD and floppy drives into it. One irritation is that the front blanking plate retaining screws took a lot of work to remove; some feeling like they were cross-threaded. Again, this is only a minor fault. The unit is also light. (Yay aluminium again)
So this a good, solid, spacious and light case. While its flaws are only slight, I think £95-£105 is a bit much to fork out for it, since no PSU is supplied. These, I suppose are the drawbacks of aluminium cases. I can't give any comparisons to other models of this type as haven't seen any of the others close up.
I got mine from Scan (http://web6.scan.co.uk/Products/Info.asp?WPID=85626) which, from my hunting, was a tenner cheaper than everywhere else I looked.
It is now also available in black, for those of a more nihilistic bent.
MrB.
This is an expensive case for the features. It is pleasingly light, the entire chasis being hewn from the purest simmering (well brushed, anyway) aluminium; but what you get for the £95 you'll spend on it doesn't seem like a lot.
Access is pretty easy. Both side panels are secured with three thumb screws, some taking a screwdriver to loosen up, but that's no major problem. The Motherboard tray slides out of the back of the case after removing another 4 thumb screws. It sticks a bit and takes some working to get completely out; but after that it's a breeze to install the initial parts.
The rear blanking plates are also secured with thumbscrews, surprisingly enough. Standard ATX PSUs will fit in a cage at the top after affixing an adaptor plate to the back of the PSU. This cage got in the way of my ATX connector and generally obstructed me a little once the tray was re-inserted.
The drive bays take a back-to-basics approach. Simply two cut sheets of aluminium that you screw your 5.25" drives into and with helpful little ledges to rest your 3.5" drives on prior to screwing them in, as well. There's some useful dead space either side of the 3.5" rack for shoving loops of ribbon cable out of the way of the primary airflow routes, too.
The case's capacity belies its size somewhat. You can comfortably fit 4 hard drives in the rack, which extends right to the bottom of the case, giving each drive lots of space either side to allow for good airflow. There's room for 4 5.25" drives, too, although the motherboard tray obstructs the bottom two slots so that only shorter drives will fit. There's also a pair of external 3.5" bays. I've got two cd drives, 3 cd drives and a floppy drive in the front of this case without it feeling cramped at all. The case is quite deep for its height, which seems to make all the difference.
The front panel connector block provides a firewire, 2 USB and an audio block. behind a neat swinging door so as not to spoil the flush frontage. Power and HDD LEDs are both blue, which they just had to be, really. I'd feel conned if I'd spent nearly a ton and got boring plebby red and green ones.
Cooling is well catered for. The interal hard drive bays have 2 front mounted 60mm intake fans (molex connectors) blowing across them. There's a 60mm rear fan by the I/O panel (3-pin motherboard connector, usefully) and another 60mm molex fan at the top.
The general build quality is the best I've seen in a case. The side panels slide in easily, screw holes align perfectly and the front face looks clean and stylish, should you care about these things. The look is spoiled a little if, like me, you stuff crappy begie-fronted CD and floppy drives into it. One irritation is that the front blanking plate retaining screws took a lot of work to remove; some feeling like they were cross-threaded. Again, this is only a minor fault. The unit is also light. (Yay aluminium again)
So this a good, solid, spacious and light case. While its flaws are only slight, I think £95-£105 is a bit much to fork out for it, since no PSU is supplied. These, I suppose are the drawbacks of aluminium cases. I can't give any comparisons to other models of this type as haven't seen any of the others close up.
I got mine from Scan (http://web6.scan.co.uk/Products/Info.asp?WPID=85626) which, from my hunting, was a tenner cheaper than everywhere else I looked.
It is now also available in black, for those of a more nihilistic bent.
MrB.
