|
Installation
As we
mentioned, the Picasso has a removable motherboard tray. There are
three screws that you would need to remove in order to slide out the tray.
They are marked above.
|
**click to enlarge** |
**click to enlarge** |
Some
pics of the tray removed and motherboard installed. The standoffs are
not pre-installed and you'll need to pop them into place.
|
**click to enlarge** |
**click to enlarge** |
Both
fan mounts only allow you to use two screws to mount your fans. The
other two are blocked off which is a bit odd. I like to install
all four screws to eliminate any possible vibration or noise from the fans.
Not a big deal though. The case looks great with any black bezel
or painted drives you may have but the front door will at least hide your
drives if you choose not to install black ones. Our painted
Pioneer DVD-ROM matched perfectly.
**click to enlarge**
Finally, a shot of the case powered on. The circle only has
one blue LED located on the side that is near the power button. It
doesn't exactly produce a full ring glow effect but it at least makes the case
that much more attractive.
Performance
To test its cooling performance, we ran the system both at idle and under load
using Sandra 2003 and recorded the temperatures using Motherboard Monitor.
Test Setup
Motherboard: Abit KT7A
CPU: AMD Athlon 1.4 (stock speed)
Video Card: ATI AIW Radeon 7500
Cooling: Thermalright AX-7 with Med Speed 80mm Sunon Fan, 2 80mm case
fans.
Temps at idle (measured 15 minutes after powered on)
Temps under load
The
Picasso's cooling performance was surprisingly decent considering it allows
only to fans to be installed. I would have to say that this is probably
due to the small vents located on the top and bottom of the side panels.
Not only to they make the case a bit more attractive, they help keep temps
down.
|
