Sazar
Rest In Peace
- Joined
- 12 Apr 2002
- Messages
- 14,905
The saga of the new case begins
I went into Fry's here in Austin today and found this case for $79 after rebates and said, hey, its a nice piece of equipment, lets score it
Good case, really liked the extra's on it and here's a little review of the case.
First impressions
First off, its EXTREMELY LIGHT and looks rather sharp. Some el-cheapo components (plastic made to look like metal finish) but for the most part it is aluminium. Thumb screws all over the place so that is a really nice touch and I LOVE the removable motherboard tray.
The fans (it takes 2) are 120MM, it comes with 1 and I bought another for the front to cool the hdd's and suck some extra air into the case. Attaching the hard-drives was easy as pie and the case has a little extra compartment where the hdd's sit where you can store the tools/screws and other attachments. Nifty feature.
Droolage continues
The front panel connector is also rather nice and hooking up the USB ports was easy. The mic/headphone jacks can also be hooked up but I couldn't be bothered since my DSP headphone/mic connect via USB. I also didn't connect the firewire adaptor since I already have 2 firewire ports on my computer and it would have been redundant.
The front panel has a readout for 2 temps and cycles through it every few seconds. I attached the first temp sensor to around my HDD area and the 2nd to my mobo. I didn't attach one around my CPU because I have a zalman 7000 CU cooler and it keeps things pretty cool and quiet.
The side panels for the case (on the side its supposed to come off) is easy to remove and made life very simple for me as well. When I first started putting the case together I thought I would be done in no time.
And thats when I was proved wrong. Very wrong.
The case has some minor annoyances, but they are extremely time consuming.
Installation issues
The 5.25" drives in the front which you see in the pics take a VERY long time to hook up if you don't know any better. The user-guide for the case is a bloody joke. Antec, for all their wisdom really dropped the ball on this one.
Apparently in order to do anything with regards to putting the drives in, you HAVE to remove the entire front face of the rig. If you don't, you cannot physically insert the drives into the bays with the provided drive rails. It is impossible. To make matters more interesting you HAVE to remove the other side panel and in their profound wisdom Antec fail to mention you have to remove not 1 but TWO thumbscrews which are located on the INSIDE of the case, well away from where you might be able to reach them normally in order to pop it off. If you don't you will either bend the side panel beyond repair or snap one of the panels on the front or both.
Workaround found, much rejoicing
Once I managed to take the thumbscrews off I was happy and left them out because they served no purpose at all from what I could see.
Anyways, once this annoyance was taken care of, everything else proceeded smoothly.
Overall a very quiet case with exceptional air-flow especially when compared to my old Antec case which I had plenty of fans in.
I am going to add more to this later time permitting and if I take more pics.
Pro's:
- Easy to use
- Looks nice
- Relatively inexpensive
- Quiet
- Rubber grommets everywhere == no vibrations and extremely quiet case
- Lovely Blue led on the Front
- Front panel connectors are convenient height and temp read-out is nice feature
- Removable Motherboard tray
- 120 MM fans move a lot of air
- My cats love it.
Con's:
- Retarded instructions. Please PM me if you need assistance with this case rather than wasting time and money breaking stuff through trial and error
- Some thumbscrews are in incredibly ridiculous places and serve no purpose. As before, PM rather than breaking something
- Plastic finish on some surfaces looks cheaper than rest of the case
- PSU tray's design makes it difficult for some PSU's to fit. I had to remove my PSU's fan guard to use the tray.
- 5.25" bay design is ingenius but manner in which drives are installed is useless. A simple fix, cannot imagine why Antec would do such a thing.
- Kitty love may lead to scratches
Overall:
4/5 Osnn star rating. Reason it is high is once you get over the annoyances, it is actually an exceptional case. And it is quiet.
I didn't get the window version because I am not a big fan of windows, however that doesn't matter much to me.
Enjoy the pics and post comments.
I went into Fry's here in Austin today and found this case for $79 after rebates and said, hey, its a nice piece of equipment, lets score it
Good case, really liked the extra's on it and here's a little review of the case.
First impressions
First off, its EXTREMELY LIGHT and looks rather sharp. Some el-cheapo components (plastic made to look like metal finish) but for the most part it is aluminium. Thumb screws all over the place so that is a really nice touch and I LOVE the removable motherboard tray.
The fans (it takes 2) are 120MM, it comes with 1 and I bought another for the front to cool the hdd's and suck some extra air into the case. Attaching the hard-drives was easy as pie and the case has a little extra compartment where the hdd's sit where you can store the tools/screws and other attachments. Nifty feature.
Droolage continues
The front panel connector is also rather nice and hooking up the USB ports was easy. The mic/headphone jacks can also be hooked up but I couldn't be bothered since my DSP headphone/mic connect via USB. I also didn't connect the firewire adaptor since I already have 2 firewire ports on my computer and it would have been redundant.
The front panel has a readout for 2 temps and cycles through it every few seconds. I attached the first temp sensor to around my HDD area and the 2nd to my mobo. I didn't attach one around my CPU because I have a zalman 7000 CU cooler and it keeps things pretty cool and quiet.
The side panels for the case (on the side its supposed to come off) is easy to remove and made life very simple for me as well. When I first started putting the case together I thought I would be done in no time.
And thats when I was proved wrong. Very wrong.
The case has some minor annoyances, but they are extremely time consuming.
Installation issues
The 5.25" drives in the front which you see in the pics take a VERY long time to hook up if you don't know any better. The user-guide for the case is a bloody joke. Antec, for all their wisdom really dropped the ball on this one.
Apparently in order to do anything with regards to putting the drives in, you HAVE to remove the entire front face of the rig. If you don't, you cannot physically insert the drives into the bays with the provided drive rails. It is impossible. To make matters more interesting you HAVE to remove the other side panel and in their profound wisdom Antec fail to mention you have to remove not 1 but TWO thumbscrews which are located on the INSIDE of the case, well away from where you might be able to reach them normally in order to pop it off. If you don't you will either bend the side panel beyond repair or snap one of the panels on the front or both.
Workaround found, much rejoicing
Once I managed to take the thumbscrews off I was happy and left them out because they served no purpose at all from what I could see.
Anyways, once this annoyance was taken care of, everything else proceeded smoothly.
Overall a very quiet case with exceptional air-flow especially when compared to my old Antec case which I had plenty of fans in.
I am going to add more to this later time permitting and if I take more pics.
Pro's:
- Easy to use
- Looks nice
- Relatively inexpensive
- Quiet
- Rubber grommets everywhere == no vibrations and extremely quiet case
- Lovely Blue led on the Front
- Front panel connectors are convenient height and temp read-out is nice feature
- Removable Motherboard tray
- 120 MM fans move a lot of air
- My cats love it.
Con's:
- Retarded instructions. Please PM me if you need assistance with this case rather than wasting time and money breaking stuff through trial and error
- Some thumbscrews are in incredibly ridiculous places and serve no purpose. As before, PM rather than breaking something
- Plastic finish on some surfaces looks cheaper than rest of the case
- PSU tray's design makes it difficult for some PSU's to fit. I had to remove my PSU's fan guard to use the tray.
- 5.25" bay design is ingenius but manner in which drives are installed is useless. A simple fix, cannot imagine why Antec would do such a thing.
- Kitty love may lead to scratches
Overall:
4/5 Osnn star rating. Reason it is high is once you get over the annoyances, it is actually an exceptional case. And it is quiet.
I didn't get the window version because I am not a big fan of windows, however that doesn't matter much to me.
Enjoy the pics and post comments.
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