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Installation
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There
is no removable motherboard tray but there is ample room to work with.
Overall, installation went very smoothly.
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The
front panel is easily pulled out without the need for any tools. As
with a majority of cases I have looked at, the stealth drive feature works
great as long as you remove the front tray bezel from the drives. If you
leave it on, it will not close properly.
**click to enlarge**
A
nice feature that most case modders will be happy with is the ability to
remove the top panel from the case. It is not riveted and there are
screws along the side and front of the top panel that will allow you to remove
it completely to either add a blow hole or carry handle if desired.
The Digital LCD
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The time actually offers two different
functions. You can have it display the actual time or choose to display
system uptime.
Now
lets look at its most impressive features...
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One
nice feature worth noting is that on the rear of the LCD, you have a switch
labeled "Mode 1" and "Mode 2". This switch will allow you to either
maintain the display on when powered down, showing you the time only, or have
it shutdown completely when you power off your system. Now I thought the
power button looked stunning even when not lit, but when powering the system,
it glows a very deep blue that I simply cannot show you in pictures. It
looks quite spectacular and compliments the evenly lit mint blue LCD quite
well.
The
fan and hard drive icons on the display are actually animated. To
demonstrate this feature, I have provided a 10 second video clip of the
display in action. You'll need
shockwave flash installed to view it.
**click to play**
10
sec video clip
Performance
The
Ahanix Blu3 allows up to four 80mm fans to be installed. This should
provide acceptable cooling. To measure its cooling performance, we will
record temps both at idle (30mins from power up) and under load. To load
the system, we will be using
Sandra 2004's Burn-In Wizard and run it at normal
setting a total of 10 times. Temps will be measured using Motherboard
Monitor.
Before we show you the results, let's take a quick look at the system specs:
| Processor: |
Pentium 4 2.4B |
| Motherboard: |
Shuttle AS45GTR |
| Power Supply: |
Antec 420W (dual fan) |
| Memory: |
Corsair XMS3200 |
| Video Card: |
ATI AIW 7500 |
| Cooling: |
All four 80mm case fans installed.
Alpha P4 heatsink. |
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**Idle (30min)** |
**Under Load** |
Very
impressive results. The case does provide above average cooling.
The case temp only went up a couple of degrees when stressed. I think
part of the reason this case provides excellent cooling performance is the
location of the front intake fans. Unlike a majority of systems, they
are not located at the very bottom of the case. They are situated a bit
higher which I think improves overall airflow.
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