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Gigabyte Poseidon 310

David Murphy — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:00:00 -0500

Instead of a god of the sea, Gigabyte’s midtower Poseidon 310 chassis is a petite prince. But that’s merely a reflection of this case’s size, not its prowess. It clocks in at 7.75”x17”x20”—small enough to fit into that nook in your desk or the space under your bed.

The LED fan on the Poseidon lends the case’s interior a subtle blue glow that’s further softened by the case’s grilled side panel.

Even given its small size, the Poseidon supports up to five 5.25-inch devices. We’re unsure why this case—or any case, for that matter—still bothers with multiple external 3.5-inch bays. You get two helpings of them on the Poseidon. We would have rather sacrificed these and an additional 5.25-inch bay in favor of more internal hard drive space. Though we’re not complaining about what we get for internal storage: three hard drive bays with included rails.

The Poseidon’s tool-free approach elevates this case above those that attempt to save on production costs by using screws. All of the rig’s key parts can be modified in a very short amount of time. Want to install a new optical drive? Pop off the front grill, slide it in, and use Gigabyte’s locking mechanism to secure it in place. Need to replace your videocard? Don’t reach for the screwdriver. Just unhook the locking tab, swap the cards, and secure the new one in place. The fact that we never had to remove both side panels to modify our rig’s insides makes us squeal with glee.

We also appreciate the Poseidon’s two blue 12cm fans. One pushes air over the drives, the other whisks it out of the case’s rear. Additionally, the case’s grilled side panel diffuses the fans’ light into a pleasant glow, but depending on your vantage point, this panel can actually obscure the case’s inner light completely.

The Poseidon 310 does suffer from a few imperfections. The front-panel support is a touch anemic with two USB ports and one FireWire 400 connector. The case’s smaller size becomes apparent when you try to stuff a larger videocard into its bowels. An 8800 GTX–size monster will fit, but you aren’t left with much room for cables on the card’s sides. A lack of motherboard tray cable-management holes exacerbates the issue.

As a whole, the Poseidon 310 is a fine chassis. Only a few missteps keep it from ascending to the Mount Olympus of cases, but we wouldn’t scoff at a lesser god.

In the Lab: Gordon Mah Ung Wants to Kill ATX

Gordon Mah Ung — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 14:44:01 -0600

Would you use a ball mouse? A VL-Bus graphics card? A Socket 7 board? Then why the hell are enthusiasts still embracing the 13-year-old ATX formfactor? It’s time we started thinking about moving beyond ATX.

Today, we’re running quad-core boxes with two or more GPUs in a formfactor created when people used serial and parallel ports and the Pentium was the hot chip in town. In the near future, USB 3 will appear on motherboards in the south-bridge chips. To route the ports, motherboard vendors must run traces all the way from the south bridge to the rear I/O shield. You might be able to do this with USB 3 data rates on a four-layer board, but can it be done with USB 5? If it requires more layers, it’ll add to the cost of the board.

The failed BTX formfactor included many forward-thinking features.

Of course, Intel tried to fix these problems with its BTX formfactor, which cratered because of resistance from case-makers, a new emphasis on cooler CPUs, and complete resistance from AMD. But if I were hardware dictator for a day, I’d propose a new formfactor called GTX (Gordon TX) that mandates:

A minimum motherboard stand-off height, so wires can be routed safely and easily under the motherboard
RAM and expansion slots that are parallel to air flow in the case
A larger board area and I/O section to accommodate the dizzy- ing array of connectors a modern power user needs
Standardized front-panel connectors for reset, power, and LEDs
Two more expansion slots. The seven in ATX aren't enough with the multi-GPU machines we’re building
Less distance between the south-bridge and north-bridge chips
A CPU cooling scheme that accounts for liquid cooling or venting from an area other than the front of the machine. While we’re at it, let’s build in more cooling for the GPU.

This probably sounds crazy because the push is for smaller, rather than larger, PCs, but I say it’s time. Average people are moving toward smaller machines or notebook PCs. Full-tower ATX boxes are increasingly focused on the workstation market; we really shouldn’t be handcuffed by formfactors designed to appeal to the masses.

Dell Drop Kicks Proprietary Parts

Gordon Mah Ung — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:25:52 -0600

Dell, long dinged for using proprietary hardware in its gaming PCs, has seen the light. The company said such annoying traits such as proprietary motherboards and power supplies is now a thing of the past.

The first XPS to shed the proprietary hardware will be the new budget XPS630 gaming machine. Based on the nForce 650 ichipset, Dell claims you can swap the board, PSU out for any other ATX-spec hardware.

The change is a long overdue. In the past, Dell has used designs that looked ATX-like but were actually not. If you tried to swap the power supply in your Pentium III Dimension XPS B 733R years ago, you would have been greeted by charred motherboard as the company actually wired its PSU’s differently than the industry but did not key them differently. For years, PC Power and Cooling has made small side business selling Dell upgrade PSUs. More recently, the company has been called out over BTX support and even using a proprietary power plug in its more recent XPS gaming rigs.

Why the use of proprietary designs? Cynical observers have said the company was just trying to lock customers into buying parts exclusively from Dell. The company has long defended the practice by saying that the variations from spec were because its engineers found the specs to be lacking. But the heat from critics and machines such as Hewlett-Packard’s Blackbird 002 going all ATX apparently have forced Dell to see the light. Company officials said the mantra in Dell engineering is that varying from the spec’s must be avoided at all costs.

The change from proprietary parts won’t be the only new trick for the XPS630 though. Dell has taken a page from Hewlett-Packard and claims the XPS 630 will support either Nvidia’s dual-card SLI or AMD’s dual-card CrossFire cards. How can Dell do this? Maximum PC spoke to AMD graphics officials who said the capability is being offered only to select OEMs who take the responsibility for making sure the drivers fully work with the BIOSes on the motherboards.

So why not just release such a driver to the public to let any nForce-user run CrossFire? The company said it is worried that a certain company could affect the performance of its cards when CrossFire is run on an SLI board so public support just isn’t going to happen. In the case of Dell and HP, AMD feels both have enough influence to keep performance problems from cropping up on their systems. For now, the CrossFire support is only through drivers obtained directly from Dell.
Dell says the XPS 630 will also be the first tier one OEM system to support Nvidia’s Enthusiast System Architecture. In the XPS 630’s case, ESA will let the user control the lights in the system. ESA support for the PSU or other components will not be initially supported.

The $1,300 version of the XPS 630 will ship with a 2.4GHz Core 2 Quad Q6600, GeForce 8800GT and a 750 watt power supply. Dell said the BIOS on the XPS 630 will support overclocking and is upgradeable to both dual and quad-core Intel Penryn CPUs.

Antec P190

Dave Murphy — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 11:26:38 -0500

If all the world’s computer cases were playing a game of Battlefield, then the Antec P190 would surely be one of the tanks. This thing is a monstrosity of a midtower, though functionally, it differs very little from everything else in Antec’s P-series of cases. However, this case does add improvements we’ve been dreaming of since we first laid our hands on the P180. The P190 comes with that extra bit of horizontal space that makes all the difference in the world if you rock extra-long videocards. Previous models were just too cramped—even if you weren’t using a water-cooling system.

We love how two in-tandem power supplies are included in this beast: a 650W device for your motherboard and cards, and a 550W one for everything else. That said, cable management is still an issue with the P190. To its credit, Antec continues to try to find better ways to route or otherwise minimize the impact of the snarl of cables shooting out of the southern chunk of the case. But the design still feels wrong, especially when you have to route your cables through a tiny rabbit hole, over a fan, and back through a hole just to get to the lower drive bay.

t least the case’s airflow is totally unrestricted, thanks to the whirling power of four 12cm fans and a beastly 20cm side-panel fan. They’re all tri-speed fans too; perfect for the air enthusiast who’s trying to keep his hearing intact.

Raidmax RX-9

Claude McIver — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 15:11:39 -0600

With its racecar-inspired design, the Raidmax RX-9 looks snazzy, and makes for an overall impressive enclosure, despite the presence of a couple questionable features.

The front bezel is made from “tinted” plastic. A gentle push on the bezel door allows it to open, revealing five 5.25-inch bays. Above the bays is a fanbus with a miniscule LCD display.

The display also contains the power button and the sensor for the included remote control. Whazzatt? Yes, an included remote about the size of the iPod Nano lets you turn the system on or off and control fan speeds remotely. Of course, we wonder why you really need a remote for this? The whole concept is ridiculous.

The interior is fully tool-less, which makes for a hassle-free building process. Preinstalled clips secure up to three 3.5-inch drives, as well as all of the 5.25-inch bay devices. The clips are easy to use and provide a secure hold. There are even idiot-proof clips for PCI expansion cards. Cooling is more than sufficient, with a 12cm intake fan, a 12cm rear exhaust, and an 8cm side intake fan that’s lit with blue LEDs.

Overall, the RX-9 has what it takes, where it counts. The plastic shell is a bit flimsy, but it covers the basics and looks good doing so.

Month Reviewed: April 2006

+ CASES: Solid cooling; easy install; racy looks.

- BRACES: Useless extras and lots of plastic.

VERDICT: 8

URL: www.raidmax.com