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July 2008: PC Hardware Hacks

The Maximum PC Staff — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 19:02:40 -0500

In the PDF archive of the July 2008 issue, you can find:

12 DIY Hardware Hacks
Budget Case Roundup
Midrange GPU Deathmatch
How To: Organize and Tag Your Videos
Awesome Product Reviews, including the excellent Thermaltake Duorb
Ask the Doctor
Rig of the Month
The Watchdog
And a whole lot more!

Click the big giant cover image to the right to download the PDF archive today!

Budget Cases Reach New Heights

David Murphy — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:58:33 -0500

Selecting the perfect computer case is like scouting the grocery store for a bottle of wine. And as oenophiles of all knowledge levels and palates know, you can’t judge a bottle by its price. In that sense, we’re scooping from the bargain bin in this month’s mega-roundup of computer cases: Only chassis priced at $100 or less are eligible.

But don’t get the wrong idea. Just because a case is cheap doesn’t mean it’s poor. Although these budget boxes may lack many of the bells and whistles of their costlier counterparts—such as built-in water cooling, hydraulic panels,
or crazy paint jobs—they can still provide an awesome fit for your computer parts.

In fact, you’ll find you have a far wider selection of models to choose from, with more vendors making economy enclosures than $500 monstrosities.

Of course, you’ll also likely find that a case’s relative pros and cons become more extreme at this price level. For example, a manufacturer may opt to release an aesthetically beautiful case… that doesn’t fit a high-end graphics card. Another may offer an ingenious way to mount hard drives, only to forgo any room for fans.

For this very reason, we mount a full system in each case we review. The components are identical to those we use in our standard benchmarking systems and represent what an enthusiast user would be working with in a typical system install. Given the smaller size of sub-$100 cases, it’s critical you verify there’s sufficient space for your components. There’s just no compromising on that point.

But we’re taking it one step further: You shouldn’t compromise on anything short of a maximum case. And as you’re going to see, it’s not always the big-name vendors that deliver.

Cases Reviewed in This Roundup

(click each name to go to the relevant review)

For comparison’s sake, we also tested one of the most expensive consumer cases on the market—Lian Li’s PC-P80R. Click the link to see what the extra jingle gets you.

Antec Three Hundred

David Murphy — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:36:00 -0500

Spinning the Three Hundred's fans at high speed brings to mind the hurricane-like din of its Nine Hundred sibling.

We find ourselves wondering how a company like NZXT can do a better job of creating a budget version of Antec’s gamer line than Antec itself. That’s not to say the Three Hundred is a bad case; it just has little that’s special.

Case in point: You get no fancy lighting effects, no side panel window, and no screwless way to mount six hard drives or three 5.25-inch devices. The case barely fits an 8800 GTX card as is—a problem we also encountered with its greater sibling, Antec’s Nine Hundred chassis.

The case comes with a 12cm and a 14cm fan around the motherboard area, and both use Antec’s familiar switch for setting the fans to high, medium, or low speeds. We’re curious why the normally fan-crazy Antec opted out of including fans for the case’s six hard drive bays—there’s space for two 12cm fans, you just have to bring your own.

The case’s cables wrapped around to our motherboard inputs quite nicely, although there’s not much to connect: Front-panel support on the Three Hundred consists of a mere two USB slots and standard audio jacks. That’s pretty spartan, given the Tempest’s eSATA and FireWire options.

But it fits the murky profile of this nondescript case. Where other chassis in this feature have tried and fallen short, Antec quit at the starting line by offering little more in the Three Hundred than what you can find in a $20 enclosure.

Click here to go back to the Budget Cases feature!

NZXT Tempest

David Murphy — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:30:39 -0500

The Tempest supports two front-panel connection options with its two USB slots and included eSATA input.

Look familiar? That’s the first thing we said when pulling NZXT’s Tempest out of the box. Save for a few minor modifications to the chassis, this case is a carbon copy of Antec’s Nine Hundred chassis. It’s built like the Nine Hundred, performs like the Nine Hundred, and even glows like the Nine Hundred, thanks to its front- and side-panel blue LED fans.

Rather than scorn it for its uncanny similarities, we see a certain wisdom in knocking off a popular design, shaving $50 off the price, and relaunching it as your very own. For what it’s worth, we experienced no difficulties whatsoever installing a modern-day system into this no-nonsense chassis. There was plenty of room to manage cables around our huge 8800 GTX card, and the case’s eight hard drive bays come with screwless rails preinstalled—you pop them off, attach them to a drive, and slide the whole deal into place. The two 12cm front-panel fans take care of the cooling efforts.

Unlike Antec’s Nine Hundred case, the two 14cm top fans and one 12cm rear fan around the Tempest’s motherboard area run at a constant speed. They chug along at a low rpm to preserve your hearing, but we’ve grown quite fond of the Nine Hundred’s customizable fan speeds. It’s a simple solution that this clone sorely lacks. But honestly, it’s one of the very few ways this sweet case falters.

Click here to go back to the Budget Cases feature!

Rosewill R5604-TBK

David Murphy — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:34:05 -0500

Rosewill tackles the low, low end of the cheap case spectrum with its $65 R5604-TBK chassis. But save for a few minor oopsies, the case makes for a breezy installation of all your computer parts. There’s nothing fancy about the R5604-TBK, no lights or other arcane mechanical trappings. It’s just a no-frills, screwless enclosure—you get an interesting industrial-style locking mechanism for the side panel, but that’s its most daring attribute.

The four 5.25-inch and six 3.5-inch bays all come with rails that you attach to your various devices before sliding them into place—we just wish the rails fit the drives better. It’s a nitpicky note, but just as with the case’s PCI holder—which pushes a bit too firmly against add-on cards—a little more engineering would have gone a long way.

While we are using an oversize PCI Express card in our tests—the GeForce 8800 GTX—the R5604-TBK would be cramped with most any build. Hands-down, this chassis comes with the least amount of space to work in of any of the sub-$100 cases we’ve reviewed. The hard drive bays jut out just far enough to limit your options when customizing your system’s internals.

The R5604 comes with a 12cm fan at both the front and rear and front-panel FireWire support is an extra-special treat. Now if only the case came with front-panel HD audio support, as well.

Click here to go back to the Budget Cases feature!

In Win F430

David Murphy — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:48:43 -0500

We don’t just want to give a 1 verdict to the person responsible for the power-on mechanism in this Ferrari-themed case. We want to strap him to a jet engine. Harsh words, but you too will be driven to undertake such bold action once you hear the ear-splitting rev of a car engine after you hit the F430’s power button. You can disable this “feature” by pulling the plug on the front panel, but hearing this noise even once is too much.

Deafness aside, the case has a few other design quirks. For starters, the snap-locking side panels are a wee bit ugly, but they do allow for superfast entry into your rig’s guts. The case offers a healthy mix of front-panel connections (four USB, one FireWire, standard audio), but the cables for them run in front of the drive bays—an odd choice that limits internal cable management options and looks unattractive.

The case uses screws to hold up to three hard drives in place and rails for up to four 5.25-inch devices. In practice, we found that the latter—such as an optical drive—tend to sit a little more recessed from the front panel than what we find aesthetically pleasing.

The case comes with a single 12cm fan in the rear and no cooling whatsoever for the boisterous side panel exhaust system or front drive bays. But this, as well as the tight space around the hard drive bays, is forgivable. The F430 is pretty and functional and comes with more front-panel connection options than most cases in this roundup.

Click here to go back to the Budget Cases feature!

Sigma Unicorn

David Murphy — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:21:25 -0500

We never thought we’d see a sub-$100 case with tinted windows, but lo and behold, Sigma’s Unicorn has lived up to its name and shown us the impossible by “blinging up” the exterior of an otherwise stale case. Like spinning rims on a minivan, however, not all of Sigma’s design decisions are well thought out.

The front panel features one of the bulkiest doors we’ve ever seen. We guess Sigma was trying to spruce up the case’s facade with the protruding front profile, but as far as we’re concerned, it just extends the length of the chassis. And we’re miffed that the door covers the front-panel connectors entirely.

Sigma makes another questionable choice with the heavy horizontal bar running across the case interior. The bar is designed to help hold your PCI cards in place while an 8cm fan handles the cooling. But the locking mechanisms are unnecessary, and you have to remove the entire retention bar just to install or tweak parts in your rig.

The case comes with more than enough cooling and screwless installation mechanisms to make any enthusiast happy, but no support for HD audio. And while we appreciate the hidden toolbox that rests under the case’s four drive bays, it’s too little, too late given the predominance of peculiarities in this not-so-magical Unicorn.

Click here to go back to the Budget Cases feature!

Thermaltake M9 VI1000BNS

David Murphy — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 20:25:07 -0500

Thermaltake’s M9 chassis is a step up from the bottom rung of simplicity, but it’s nowhere near a top-of-the-line design. The case is structured as if Thermaltake took a plain-Jane chassis, improved a few features—like making the PCI and 5.25-inch bay holders screwless—stuck in a front-panel blue LED fan to appease gaming audiences, and called it a day. That might not sound so bad, but in actuality, the screwless PCI holders become this case’s Achilles’ heel. And the arrow? Any dual-slot videocard on the market.

Due to the notched nature of the PCI retention tabs, there is absolutely no way to fit a dual-slot videocard into your rig and still make use of the screwless functionality. You’d have to forcibly rip off the entire retention mechanism just to fit the card in—and that’s assuming you have the proper screws lying around to do that.

On the other hand, we like the screwless drive holders. The case gives you plenty of expansion room with its nine 5.25-inch forward bays, three of which serve as holders for hard drives. It’s just a tad annoying, however, that you still have to pop off the case’s entire front panel to stuff 5.25-inch devices into your system. Front-panel connectivity consists of just two USB ports and the standard audio jacks. The lack of additional connection options isn’t a critical omission, but it’s certainly not preferable.