|
Lets take a closer look at the case and see what makes it unique from the
others. First off, the case does not come with any fans or PSU. I was
quite surprised to not see at least an intake fan pre-installed. It has
3 total fan spots. 1 intake and 2 exhaust.
Lets take a look at the inside:
The case is quite spacious for such a small form factor. It will hold 4
5.25" drives and 3 3.5" drives. There is no removable motherboard tray.
There are thumb screws on both side panels. The top panel is actually
removable but comes with standard screws. Your probably thinking...MOD!
If we look at the picture on the left, you'll see that even if you remove the
top panel to add a blowhole or window, you still have a layer under it that
will be in your way. This may be a problem if you plan on installing a
top fan. You may need to cut that layer as well. Regardless, you
may find it difficult to mod the top of the case.
Now on to it's best features!
The removable
side panel has a nice factory installed window as shown below:
The front of the case is absolutely beautiful! The first thing you'll
notice is 2 acrylic strips along each side of the case. These actually
light up blue! (We will see those pics later). The front of the
case is plastic but has this really nice rubberized feel to it. The
power and reset buttons are of high quality and have a nice feel to them.
The LED's are green for the power and red for the hard drive activity. I don't
know why they decided to go with the green LED for power. They should
have included a blue one to match the theme of the case. You'll be
happy to know that the front LED's are actually socketed and can easily be
replaced with color of your choice. Finally, the very bottom has a slot
that reveals it's 2 USB ports, mic and headphone jacks as shown on the pic on
the right.
Another nice feature worth mentioning is the built-in external drive bays.
These let you hide your drives but keep them accessible but simply pressing
the silver buttons embedded into the bays. This keeps the overall design
of the case the same. I would have liked to see one more CD bay like
this as most systems usually have two CD drives.
Your probably wondering how those acrylic strips
light up. Let's take a look:
Once you remove the front panel, you'll notice the wiring around the edges.
These hold a total of 4 blue LED's. One at each corner facing each other
as shown on the picture on the right above. At first, I wondered why
they did not place 2 more in the middle section and whether they would light
up the strips evenly. We'll see how they do later. |
