Date: |
March 27, 2004 |
Price: |
$109.99 |
Sponsors: |
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Author: |
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Editor: |
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Score: |
7/10 |
CasEdge Diabolic Minotaur Mid-Tower Case Case Interior
Case Interior
 Now that we've had a look at the outside of the Diabolic
Minotaur, let's take a look at the inside. First off we have a look at the
inside of the windowed panel. Notice the green cone? That helps funnel outside
air directly to your CPU heatsink, which should, in theory, help your cooling.
Behind the funnel is a washable filter, which will help keep the dust out. Also,
this is how the case looked when I first cracked it open. The exhaust fan was
installled, the CCFL was securely taped to the removable motherboard tray, and
the manual and power cord were just placed in there.
 Here's a look at the goodies that came with the case,
once they were taken out. Pretty standard stuff. The thing in the little
zip-lock bad is a lock bracket for the side panel, in case you want to make
absolutely sure no one gets inside your rig without your say-so. Also notice the
feet of the case in the background. They aren't your plain, old case feet.
They're actually scalloped to look like claws. I don't believe the Minotaur of
mythology had claws, but at least the feet aren't just plain flat pieces of
plastic.
      
Here is a look at the drive bays, both from the inside and outside of the
case. Notice that, unlike most cases, the Diabolic Minotaur was designed with
removeable interior drive bay covers, so you don't want to toss these when you
install additional drives, just in case you take the drives out at a later date.
Also, the drive bays are all 'toolless'. That means that you don't need tools to
install your drives, but only after you use a screwdriver to install the
requisite brackets on the drives themselves first.
Pop quiz time: What is missing in these pictures? Give up? There is no place
to mount an intake fan! Yes, there are a ton of ventilation holes, but there is
no way to help get any air from the outside of the case to the inside of the
case unless you buy and install something in one of the 5.25" bays or cut some
fan holes in the case yourself. I think this is a big design flaw. Another
thing, which really isn't evident from the pictures, is that there is no hard
drive activity light and no speaker in this case. I thought that somewhere on
the PCB that takes up so much of the front of the case under that plastic cover
they would have made the 'eyes' hard drive activity lights, but that didn't
happen. These issues, when added together, constitute a fairly large problem in
my book, one I hope CasEdge will remedy before too long.
If you have any comments or questions regarding this review, please
post them in this thread on our forums.
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