Value Case Roundup: A Look at the Affordable
by Purav Sanghani on February 1, 2005 12:35 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Chenming 301KEBL (cont'd)
Construction
Since Chenming has a great deal of experience with sheet metal, they have done a great job in manufacturing the 301KEBL. It is made of 0.7mm steel and we were satisfied to find no sharp edges anywhere inside the case.
The 301KEBL is, structurally, the strongest case that we have here so far. The last four models have been made of steel ranging from prone to some bending to extremely malleable, which is not a good thing.
Cooling
Though the construction of the 301KEBL is quite sound, the cooling system is not the best in this roundup so far. The unit, as it came, had no cooling fans installed in it (we needed to install our own for our benchmarks), but does have two possible places to mount 80mm fans.
The first fan can be mounted at the front underneath the removable drive cage as we see from the purple casing, and the second can be mounted at the back of the case under the power supply.
This model did not come with a power supply, which surprised us a little, since the first four cases did have one included in their purchase price.
Installation
Though not as quick as with the Foxconn case, installation went smoothly for all of our components. After working with the Foxconn TK-09, we did find it a bit annoying to have to remove the casing at the back of the chassis to install add-in cards.
Total time for installation came out to about 10 minutes.
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semo - Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - link
what is up with anadtech and cases...it is either ugly and flashy and expensive or ugly and flashy and expensive and cheap looking or just plain cheap.
and like arfan said... where do you buy these things? here in the uk there are cheap cases, but almost non of the reviewed
suggestions for next case reviews:
cooler master cm stacker
antec P160
i know we all know these are gd cases but its a start imo
ocyl - Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - link
Agreed with Jynx980 here. I am getting tired of all those flashy cases in the market nowadays.Jynx980 - Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - link
Guess I'll be the first one to say somthing positive about this article. It a good roundup for entry level cases. Nice to know what ranks high up when your building something for a friend or family member who really doesnt need a $50-$75 case.kcma - Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - link
OFMG!!!so much ugliness in 1 article!!!
agreed with #4, please do yourself a favor... save some money and stay away from this ugliness by buying a Dell.
aeternitas - Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - link
I'm sorry, but if you are gonna go with something as cheap as these cases, I doubt youll be putting a whole lot of quality inside, thus I reccomend those people to just get a dell.nourdmrolNMT1 - Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - link
this article likes to keep disappearing on me.intriging.
MIKE
arfan - Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - link
there is bad link when i clik to Benchmark-Sound. Please fix it, thxarfan - Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - link
No one in list is available in my country :( We usully buy case only with U$$ 25-40