lynx
10-18-2008, 01:18 AM
Well, I finally did it.
I've been promising myself a new case for some time, and events have forced me to act now. I'm not going to bother with pics because there isn't much to show that you can't see on the manufacturer's web site. Apart from volt modding the front fan down to 7 volts I haven't found a need to change anything.
OK, down to practicalities, the case has it's good points and it's shortcomings.
First of all it is quiet. And I mean really quiet. I've just got home and I wasn't sure the system was running. Ok, it's not silent, but I'm not used to such a low level of noise. This 400mm fan really delivers what it promises.
Next, the design allows me to route most of the cables down the "hidden" side of the chassis, but that's pure luck not their intention. It's a bit tight, but the headers from the top panel just fit between the joint where the motherboard backplane and the main chassis meet. To put a genuine design hole to make this cable route obvious wouldn't significantly add to the cost, would prevent chaffing of the cables during placement and would give a little more slack.
OK, what's wrong with this case? Basically it comes down to the HDD mounting.
I mentioned the front fan. It's on the wrong side of the chassis. The result is that it intrudes into the area where you need to mount any hard drives, and since the primary reason for mounting a fan in this area is to cool your hard drives this seems like a basic flaw.
All the drive bays are 5.25" and there are "vibration-proof" adapters to mount 3.5" drives into the bays. The problem is that the drives have to be moved back about 1.5" because of the fan. In addition, because of the design of the adapters there are limitations about just where you can mount the drives in relation to the fan. This could be overcome if the adapters were in left and right hand pairs, but being symmetrical they protrude into the fan area.
The extra downside for me is that the drives now cover one of the Sata connectors. Not much of a problem personally since that one isn't in use, but I can see that it could present problems for others.
The final problem is lining up the adapters. It's OK on the open side, but trying to line them up on the blind side almost needs 3 hands. In addition, the short screws mean that even after lining things up you can't get the screws to bite into anything without applying pressure - this is where you need the third hand. Then, when I came to mount the second drive the gap had closed up too much, making adjustment difficult. I suppose these are problems with any rubber mounting.
Overall, I'm very pleased with the end result, but a little bit of work on the design could have saved me a fair amount of hassle.
I've been promising myself a new case for some time, and events have forced me to act now. I'm not going to bother with pics because there isn't much to show that you can't see on the manufacturer's web site. Apart from volt modding the front fan down to 7 volts I haven't found a need to change anything.
OK, down to practicalities, the case has it's good points and it's shortcomings.
First of all it is quiet. And I mean really quiet. I've just got home and I wasn't sure the system was running. Ok, it's not silent, but I'm not used to such a low level of noise. This 400mm fan really delivers what it promises.
Next, the design allows me to route most of the cables down the "hidden" side of the chassis, but that's pure luck not their intention. It's a bit tight, but the headers from the top panel just fit between the joint where the motherboard backplane and the main chassis meet. To put a genuine design hole to make this cable route obvious wouldn't significantly add to the cost, would prevent chaffing of the cables during placement and would give a little more slack.
OK, what's wrong with this case? Basically it comes down to the HDD mounting.
I mentioned the front fan. It's on the wrong side of the chassis. The result is that it intrudes into the area where you need to mount any hard drives, and since the primary reason for mounting a fan in this area is to cool your hard drives this seems like a basic flaw.
All the drive bays are 5.25" and there are "vibration-proof" adapters to mount 3.5" drives into the bays. The problem is that the drives have to be moved back about 1.5" because of the fan. In addition, because of the design of the adapters there are limitations about just where you can mount the drives in relation to the fan. This could be overcome if the adapters were in left and right hand pairs, but being symmetrical they protrude into the fan area.
The extra downside for me is that the drives now cover one of the Sata connectors. Not much of a problem personally since that one isn't in use, but I can see that it could present problems for others.
The final problem is lining up the adapters. It's OK on the open side, but trying to line them up on the blind side almost needs 3 hands. In addition, the short screws mean that even after lining things up you can't get the screws to bite into anything without applying pressure - this is where you need the third hand. Then, when I came to mount the second drive the gap had closed up too much, making adjustment difficult. I suppose these are problems with any rubber mounting.
Overall, I'm very pleased with the end result, but a little bit of work on the design could have saved me a fair amount of hassle.