Features

I’ll start with the front of the Armor Case. I like the overall fit and feel of the front of this case, although the styling does look very much like the new Chenming 602. The chrome job, although on plastic, is very nicely done with no apparent blemishes. The most apparent feature is the LCD display just underneath the door. It is backlit blue, and only displays the temperature in Fahrenheit. On the left side is the reset switch, and on the right is the power switch. I had a little issue with the fact that both look almost exactly alike…unless you’ve used the case for a while there’s a high probability you might hit the wrong button. Just under the LCD display are the HDD and Power lights, red and green respectively. The front USB, Microphone, and Headphone jacks are just on the right side of the front bezel behind a small removable cover.

I had a few issues with the door itself. First, it opens to the side the window is on…and I still haven’t figured out why you’d have a window in your case you can’t see. The door also has a pretty tight fit to the 5.25” bays not leaving much room for items with protruding knobs and switches. The best thing about the door was the opening and closing itself. Even though it has the cheaper plastic clip style of latch, it’s certainly the nicest of the type I’ve ever run across.

The left side of the case is dominated by a UV reactive side window, with a lone 80mm fan mounted just above where the CPU would be. The fan has a duct on the other side, funneling cool outside air directly to the CPU cooling fan. I’ve seen this setup before on the Chimaera Gaming Case, and like it a lot. This will limit the overall height of the cooler that you can use though. An interesting feature of the Armor Case is along the top panel. The side edges of the top panel of the case have many angled holes along the whole panel. This allows the hotter air that can get caught up by the CD-ROM drives a place to escape…very nice!

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The rear of the case is exactly the same style as the recently reviewed Virgo 811. The strange vents are back again, although the Armor case has a replaceable I/O plate instead of the knock out one on the Virgo.

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This is where the Armor Case was damaged. At some point it got dropped…hard enough to dent in the upper thumbscrew for the left panel. I’m not sure whether to blame the packaging or the handling, but something ain’t right!

The right side panel is just as plain as could be. I’ll mention here that the mounting system for the side panels is identical to that of the Virgo, and they’re just not very smooth to take off and replace.

Inside the Armor Case is very Spartan, and bears a strong resemblance to the Virgo interior. The exhaust consists of a lone clear 120mm fan and there is also room in the front for either an 80mm or 120mm fan, which is not included.

The rear fan is attached with a tool free clip, and is the only real luxury on the inside at all. On the plus side, having the screw mounts with the long adjustment slots allows some flexibility to work with the tight fitting door. The temperature sensor is of the flat probe type.

Next: Install & Testing