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Features
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I personally like to start
my walk around of any case with its most distinguishing feature. With the
Centurion 5, this happens to be the front panel. The styling is surprisingly
contemporary, and unlike some of the cases we’ve looked at in the past, would feel right at home in a professional setting. The entire front panel,
including the bay covers is made of a wire mesh backed with foam to keep the
dust out. Compared to many cases we’ve seen that stifle the incoming air,
this is a great feature. The silver accents and buttons are all brushed
aluminum and nicely done. There is a front port array on the very bottom,
which includes two USB ports as well as one each of Firewire, Microphone,
and Headphone jacks. The Centurion has sacrificed one exposed 3.5” bay for
an extra 5.25” bay, bringing the total to five.
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The side panels are both
identical, and I immediately noticed they were similar to the plain panel on
the Guardian…as we will see the similarities keep on coming. The Guardian
panel is the shiny one on the left side of the picture above.
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The
rear has a single 120mm exhaust fan with a honeycomb-style stamped grille. I
don’t like stamped grilles, but this is the best of the type. Also visible
here are the tool free PCI slots.
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Pulling open the side panel
shows just how much in common the Centurion 5 and Guardian have. The tool
free setup is identical, save for the coloration of the plastic. This is a
good thing, as I think this setup works very well. The big difference is the
120mm fan in the rear…this is what should have been in the Guardian instead
of the dual 80mm fan setup in the offset box. Also unlike the Guardian, the
Centurion 5 has an 80mm intake fan installed up front. Some of the bad items
have not gone away however, such as the knock out PCI brackets and the lack
of a motherboard tray.
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One thing that’s both good
and bad is the included 350 watt power supply. It has two SATA connectors,
and it also has two special “fan only” 4 pin Molex connectors, which are
useful to have. The problem is it only has 4 standard Molex connectors.
That’s not a lot at all, and could be a problem during install. I personally
don’t see the point in a power supply that can’t get power to all the
available bays in a case, but that’s what we’ve got here.
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