Case Fans
When it comes to gaming chassis, the most important features are those for cooling the installed hardware. The best games require the latest in computing technologies to perform their best and if not physically taken care of, those high end, hot running components could become damaged.This is where case fans come into play. Chenbro has decided to go with a combination of a 120mm and a 92mm LED fan to increase air flow as well as decrease the noise. We have found in the past that 120mm fans are much quieter than their smaller 92mm counterparts and felt Chenbro should have gone with a pair of 120mm fans instead.
The first fan, the 92mm, is mounted at the front of the Xpider II as an intake. It directs air at the HDD carriage, which we have seen happen in more than a handful of cases like Thermaltake's Damier V6000, SuperFlower's X-Mask, and NZXT's Guardian.
Click to enlarge.
The second 120mm fan is mounted at the back of the case at the height of where the CPU would be to increase air flow over the CPU heatsink. This allowed the CPU to run much cooler than other cases.
Click to enlarge.
A third fan would have been a great addition, for example, to exhaust air from those heat dispersing VGA cards, like the ATI 9700 Pro that we used in testing the Xpider II.
Update: We originally posted the first fan to be 80mm which was smaller than what was actually included, 92mm. Chenbro has contacted us on this issue to help us resolve this discrepency.
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Staples - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link
Very ugly design. It certainly will not be my next case.kmmatney - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link
Can't say that I've ever found a removable motherboard tray very useful. Just gives more parts to rattle and weakens the structure. You certainly don't need it to swap out components.shuttleboi - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link
Do Anandtech reviewers have a problem with aesthetics or something? Why do they keep reviewing these really butt-ugly cases? How about something (e.g. from Lian-Li or Coolermaster) that isn't completely repulsive?Budman - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link
" We test it with all the same PSU so that the noise comparisons are all the same.Kristopher "
that may be good for mobo/cpu tests but you're reviewing a CASE,you just cant pick & chose the parts you like.
The case should be reviewed as is just like anybody who's going to go buy it,not everybody's going to have a spare psu handy.
And just like the other guy said it's a freaking Fortron 350 watter great psu.
very bad ideal to swap out the psu,when you buy it will it come with that other psu? NO . so if you're going to review do it as it will come from the store.
Sonic587 - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link
"Installation of all components took no more than 15 minutes and since the Chenbro threw in a 350W power supply, a few minutes were shaved off that total installation time. We did swap out that power supply with our own test bed unit, the OCZ 520W PowerStream, for our benchmarks."Excuse me if I missed something, and ignore this if I did, but they just "threw in" a 350W power supply? That's a Fortron FSP350-60PN. A very high quality PSU that could handle almost any system out there today. I think there should be some credit to Chenbro for choosing a quality component that is so often ignored.
That said, I agree it is 110% fugly.
BUBKA - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link
I heard it was optimized to play spiderman 2 and benches 3% fasterKristopherKubicki - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link
We test it with all the same PSU so that the noise comparisons are all the same.Kristopher
Degrador - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link
Yep, I'm with #1. Fugly.Monkeydonutstick - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link
Super StupidBudman - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link
Why in the hell would you go to all the trouble of reviewing a case but then swap out the PSU???You should have tested it with the PSU it came with.