Ventilation
Contents
Our main concern about this case was regarding its internal ventilation, as PCs built on acrylic cases tend to heat a lot more. This case, however, surpassed our expectations: you can install up to six fans on it. Four of these places are fixed: one 120 mm fan on the rear panel, two 120 mm fans on the left panel and one 80 mm fan on the top panel.
The problem is that this case comes only with three 120 mm fans and there is no cover for the top 80 mm hole. So unless you buy an 80 mm fan you will have a permanent hole on the top of your case.
The fans that come with the case use 3-pin connectors for you to install them directly on the motherboard, allowing you to monitor their speed through your favorite monitoring program. Each fan also has a power adapter allowing you to connect them directly to the power supply if your motherboard hasn’t enough fan connectors.
The holes for the fans don’t offer any kind of protection. At one hand this is very good: traditionally cases use a meshed protection that blocks part of the airflow. So on this case all fans will provide 100% of their airflows. On the other hand, you can hurt a finger or break something by touching the fans. Also, since there is no dust filter, the fans will blow a lot of dust inside your case. The case comes with one grill, but the manufacturer recommends it to be installed on the optional fan that goes in the middle of the case (see Figure 21). We think that this case could come with four more grills.
Figure 17: Fans that come with the case installed on their places.
The two additional places you can install fans are the front panel and inside the case, in the same fashion used on Silent Storm case from the same manufacturer.
The case comes with an adapter for you to install a 120 mm fan on the front panel (see Figure 4). This fan will take three 5.25” bays. The preferred place for installing this fan is in front of the hard disk drive cage, but you can install it on any three bays you like. You will need to buy this fan. If you use any of the fans that come with the case you will have an open hole either on the left panel or on the rear panel (if you look closely to Figure 18 you will see that the lower hole on the left panel is opened).
Figure 18: Front 120 mm fan installed in front of the hard disk drive cage.
In Figure 19, you can see the optional fan that can go inside the case, to be placed around the front side of the motherboard (this fan is called “core fan” by the manufacturer).
Figure 19: Optional fan.
Figure 20: Left panel with the three fans installed.
Figure 21: Case with all 120 mm fans installed (we had to buy two of them).
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