| Many of you will be spending in execs of £75 for your next case in the opinion that cheap cases are of always of bad quality, pre mods have not helped this view with there "tacky" lights and poor airflow management. This case seeks to disprove this lets see if it performs up to expectations... |
I needed a new case, my old one was falling to bits and had quite poor airflow so my new graphics card was getting quite toasted. The original plan was to purchase an expensive portable case like the Antec "LAN-boy", unfortunately my wallet had a serious problem with spending £65 on a case. I set to work and scoured ebuyer for bargain cases, after been barraged with pre mods until I found this case. It only cost £23 in total due to free delivery so I purchased one and it arrived 5days later: |
As you can see it's finished in black and silver tastefully in my view. The handles on top are perfectly adequate for moving the case short distances but flex and are made of plastic so I question their long term durability. The oversized raised X on the side panel, in the corners of the x are latches which form the most impressive chassis entry of any case I have seen. To open the case simply clip the latches in to the center and pull the panel off. There are front panel audio and usb, the good thing about them in this particular case is that they have complete plugs instead of lose wires saving hours of cursing as you get the wiring wrong. They fitted perfectly onto my motherboards heders but some boards may have problems as there is no fixed standard for usb header's that's closely agreed to.  Inside the case is similarly well manufactured, to the left is the hard disk/cd ROM drive rack which I would prefer to be removable. For in the future I may want to I wanted to mount all my Hard disks in the top of the case to save weight and space. Although not roomy inside there was no problem installing any of the hardware, the psu install was extremely easy in that the cables were with a little planning very easy to make adequately tidy as if the case construction helped. There was plenty of room between my graphics card and drive cage even though its a 5900xt which uses the same pcb as a 5950ultra. Fan installation was a big headache though, reading that this case had 2x120mm mounts and an 80mm mount I bought 2x120mm fans, only to find that the front of the case is solid plastic with a tiny vent at the bottom. I had to install only one fan at the back which thankfully had a very low restriction grill. |
| The temperatures of this case are truly excellent even with only one 120mm fan, they are as follows (no overclocks in these tests): cpu Idle (amd athlon 2800+ stock cooler): 33c cpu full load (amd athlon 2800+ stock cooler): 36c Hard disk (80gb 8mb cahe 7200rpm): 27c Temperatures in old case (1x60mm outlet, 1x80mm inlet): cpu Idle (amd athlon 2800+ stock cooler): 41c cpu full load (amd athlon 2800+ stock cooler): 43c Hard disk (80gb 8mb cahe 7200rpm): 17c As you can see the new case has dramatically lowed most temperatures apart from the hard disk which was mounted in airflow before and now isn't. But 27c is still well within operating parameters. I had now way of measure graphics card temps at the time as I don't have the leadertech driver installed. Hard disk temps were taken with HD tune and the cpu temps with asus probe. |
| Good points: sturdy construction good looks for a £23 case Handels easy entry system easy to install usb headers 120mm fan mounts increadably cheap good airflow Bad points: Slightly flimsy handles green and orange power and Hd lights No easy way to stealth drives only one fan mount can be used Overall this case far surpassed my expectations for a case in this price range and I would have no trouble recommending it to anyone interested in a case that doesn't have to house an Sli rig. Id be worried about the lack of front fans with the massive heat of sli. so I give it 90% |
| The case can be aquired from www.ebuyer.co.uk quickfind: 65318 |
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