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Installation
**click to enlarge**
Installation was sort of a mixed bag. At first glance, this case looks
like it does not have a removable motherboard tray but to my surprise, it
actually does and it is quite possibly one of the best I've seen. There
is only one screw to remove and you can pull the tray in/out with ease.
**click to enlarge**
While
the removable motherboard tray did simplify installation, the front panel was
a different story. I had a hard time trying to remove it. It turns
out that the panel is not only held together by the plastic push pins,
but also with some screws. You have to remove a total of six screws before
you can actually pop it out. I don't see the need for the screws as the
plastic lock pins hold it together quite well.
**click to enlarge**
Finally, we have a shot of the inside of the front panel. You can see
the wiring job for the front LED's and LCD display. Even though the
power and reset buttons are located on the top of the case, the cables are
long enough and you'll have no problem getting them to reach the headers on
the lower front of the board.
**click to enlarge**
Although difficult to show in pictures, the front LCD has a deep blue
backlight that matches the pre-installed LED fans quite well.
Unfortunately, you don't have the option to display the temperature in șC.
**click to enlarge**
A
final shot of the front powered up. The silver model does look nice with
the front door closed and provides a rather nice lighting effect.
Performance
First, let's take a look at the test system:
|
Test System |
| Motherboard: |
Soyo SY-P4VAL |
| CPU: |
Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHz |
| Memory: |
Corsair XMS3200 512MB |
| Hard Drive: |
Western Digital 40GB |
| Cooling: |
Stock Intel P4 Heatsink |
The
Aspire X-Infinity comes with two LED fans that actually move a decent amount
of air. I installed a 120mm case fan on the rear and two 80mm fans on
the front. That's a total of five fans that can be installed on this
case. To load the system, we used
Sisoftware's Sandra 2004 Burn-In
Wizard and ran it a total of 10 times at normal setting.
|
Idle Temp |
Load Temp |
| Case:
28șC |
Case:
29șC |
| CPU:
42șC |
CPU:
45șC |
The
results were very impressive. No matter how hard I tried, I could not
get the case temperature to hit 30șC, even after running the burn-in wizard a
second time. Its excellent cooling is likely
due to the 120mm rear case fan option as well as the two pre-installed LED
fans which move quite a bit of air.
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