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Installation
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Unfortunately, there isn't a removable motherboard tray or removable drive
cage however, there is ample room to work with. That's
understandable though considering its price tag.
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Now the front panel is quite difficult to
remove. It can take you a minute or several minutes if you don't
have the proper tool. As you can see above, there are 6
plastic standoffs that need to be pushed out in order to remove the front
panel. I recommend you use a socket screwdriver like the one shown
above to push them out. If not, you'll spend quite a bit of time
just trying to remove it. They are not easy to push out without one
of these.
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A few shots with all fans installed.
We installed six xoxide 80mm fans that they kindly provided for this
review as we wanted to test the Xdreamer's max cooling ability.
These fans are rated at 39CFM @ 31dBA. You can pick
them
up for only $1.99ea. As I mentioned before, you have the option to
install one 120mm fan in the rear instead of the two 80mm fans.
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If you install all four fans on the
front, you can install the hard drive at the very bottom of the drive cage
that way we can provide cooling while maintaining proper air circulation
in the case. The temperature sensor is the flat type so you can
stick it just about anywhere.
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The hinged panel with eject
button worked quite well and we did not experience any problems opening or
closing the CDROM. Personally, I like these as they are quite
functional and hide your drives
which eliminates the need to paint your drive bezels.
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**click to enlarge** |
The blue backlit temp display looks great
on this case. Now by default the display is set to read temp
in Fahrenheit but it can be set to read in Celsius however, I could not
get it set to read it this way. The instructions located on the rear
housing of the LED display are not very clear. I spent quite a bit
of time playing with it but no luck. The power LED is green and the
hard drive LED is red. I would have liked to see a blue Power LED as
it would match with the overall theme of the case. The side fan has 3 blue LED's. Overall, the case looks
quite nice.
Performance
To measure cooling performance, we used
motherboard monitor to measure the temperature of the case and CPU both
idle and under load. The CPU installed for testing was a AMD
1.4 T-bird.
Temps at idle (measured 30 minutes after
powered on)
Temps under load
Very nice!
I was quite impressed with these readings. The idle case
temperature was a low 28C and only maxed at 31C under load.
CPU temps are in blue above and were also very low. Keep in mind
that this is with all 8 fans running. This case offers
excellent cooling thanks to the ability to install a total of 8 fans.
Definitely a case for the avid overclocker.
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