Mark Wilson's Blog

New Computer Case

A couple entries back I mentioned that I purchased a new computer case to deal with some overheating problems. I thought I'd say a couple words about the new addition.

I went into the search for a new case with three basic requirements: It had to cool very well, it had to have plenty of room, and it had to look decent. I realize that the lattermost point is pretty stupid, and that the purpose of the thing is to work, not to look pretty, but I figure if I'm spending that much money the least they can do is give me something that's not totally repulsive. (This is more of a problem than you might be inclined to think, actually. Geeks have terrible taste or something. I can't find any of the truly terrible examples I came across during my search right now, but they're out there.)

Some features I was looking for but which weren't absolutely essential were a removable motherboard tray, a sideways-mounted hard drive cage, and a temperature monitor. Unfortunately, there is no case manufacturer in the world that manages to put all of these things together in one case. I'm not entirely sure why, but there it is. A compromise was necessary.

Eventually, after much agonizing, I settled on Thermaltake's "Tsunami" case. It has none of my extra features, but it does have the two 12-cm fans. I was pleased to find a local computer shop that carried the model. I've come to prefer local brick-and-mortar shops for electronics; it's harder for them to ignore you if you have a problem.

When I arrived at the store, the guy who was working the showroom told me that all their black Tsunamis were out at a show. He suggested a different case, or offered me the silver model (which I didn't particularly want); when I mentioned that I was really interested in the 12-cm fans, he dragged out a similar model by Thermaltake, the S-Viking, which he was selling for about $20 less than the Tsunami. After some wavering, I asked him for his recommendation and was somewhat surprised when he indicated the cheaper model -- his justification being that it was cheaper and the shop built computers with it and didn't have problems.

The S-Viking, in fact, comes with two of my wish-list items: A temperature monitor (and two speed knobs for the case fans), and the sideways hard-drive cage. So I bought it.

The S-Viking is a nice big mid-tower case. There's plenty of elbow room inside. The case is steel construction, not aluminum as with the Tsunami: It's a little heavier, and not as efficient at heat dissipation, but nice and sturdy. There are no sharp edges inside. Most items feature tool-less removal and insertion: Hard drives, 5.25" disk drives, and expansion cards all go in and out without a screwdriver. Bizarrely, the 3.5" floppy-drive bay requires screw mounting.

I'm a little wary of the screwless mounting for the hard drives. While the 5.25" rails fit tightly into the mounting holes on the larger drives, the 3.5" rails are only held onto the hard drives by the constraint of the drive cage. Removal and insertion of the hard drives requires a little care, lest you should inadvertantly drop them.

Additionally, the screwless mounting system for the cards isn't the usual individual plastic tab for each card -- there's one metal strip that clamps down across all the cards, holding them in place. I'm not terribly worried about the cards falling out while I replace one or anything like that, but it's a little tricky to clip the metal into its mounting points sometimes.

A plethora of wires runs from the top front of the case -- front audio ports, two USB ports, a Firewire port, the power button and its LED, the hard drive light, the reset button, the temperature probe, the power connector for the temperature monitor, and the two case-fan rheostats. Someday I'm going to have to open the case up and tuck them neatly away; as it stands, wires are running hither, thither, and yon to make all the connections.

Either my motherboard manufacturer or Thermaltake goofed up one thing -- I'm guessing it was the mobo people, though their way makes more sense. The power-LED pinout on the board is two pins wide, since there are only two wires running to the light. Inexplicably, the case uses a three-pin-wide connector. I haven't seen enough systems to know who's right, but at any rate it's not a big deal to replace the connector from the case, and it's not a big deal to leave the thing unconnected, since the temperature monitor lights up blue when the computer is on (and the thing sounds like a B-52 with both fans running full-tilt).

Speaking of the motherboard... The S-Viking eschews, in part, the standoffs commonly used to mount a motherboard to the case. Raised bumps in the tray at the mounting points provide the distance required, but only at certain points. My MicroATX board required two standoffs (which were supplied with the case). I was a little worried about this, but it seems to have worked fine so far.

The hard drive cage is a mixed blessing. There's more room when it's turned sideways, and access is much easier. However, Thermaltake designed this cage with the apparent intention that you would mount drives with the back end (connections) out -- there doesn't seem to be room to run the cables behind the cage and connect them from behind. I've seen debates about which way to put hard drives in a sideways cage, but mounting them front-end out reduces cable clutter and doesn't require as long an IDE cable -- I had to really mangle the short cable from my old case to get both my hard drives connected until I could get my hands on a longer one.

The drive rails and some other handy things are shipped in a plastic box that can sit in the hard drive cage. Unfortunately, it's fairly large and can only be left in one of two locations in the cage, so if you have more than one hard drive you'll probably find yourself tossing it in a drawer or something.

The hard drive cage also isn't removable. It doesn't need to be for drive installation, obviously, but this also precludes access to the intake fan from inside the case. To get to it, you have to remove the entire front bezel of the case -- something you also have to do to clean the fan's filter or to install 5.25" drives. I'm somewhat less than thrilled about all this removing of the bezel -- it's attached by six plastic clips inside the case, and I know all about plastic clips. It's also a little tricky to get the bezel back on -- I often find myself encountering a source of resistance that I can't track down. The wires that run to the knobs and the temperature monitor prevent you from fully detaching the bezel, so you have to lean it against the case or lay it on top, and then you have to be very careful not to pinch the wires as you put the bezel back on.

Outside, the case looks good. It's got a matte-black finish -- in retrospect, it's a good thing I ended up with this case instead of the Tsunami, which has a high-gloss finish: I already have a miniscule scratch on one side of this case, and a couple in the acrylic window, so the glossy finish would probably be in shreds at this point.

The bezel, and its door, are black plastic. I'm not so happy about that. The Tsunami has an aluminum outer door at the front (and uses a plastic inner door for mounting access to the drive bays, the fan, and the fan's filter, to avoid removing the bezel every two minutes). Metal is always better than plastic, particularly when you're talking about moving parts like hinges. Additionally, I like the look of the Tsunami's door better, but since neither of them is overly gaudy I'll overlook that.

The power switch and front ports are mounted on the top of the case. This is a trick I find myself liking more and more, since the case is designed to sit on the floor (and certainly won't sit on a Case Western dorm desk). Mounting them at the extreme front of the case was a good idea, too, as I read several complaints that the Tsunami's central-top location for the ports caused some headaches during power-supply installation. I have one small nitpick about this design, though: Why no door for the ports? Leaving USB ports open and pointed up like that is like putting a big sign on them saying, "DUST COLLECTION HERE."

The big thing on the outside of the case, for me, is the temperature monitor and the fan controls. They're not equivalent to some of the really good aftermarket systems, but it's certainly better than nothing. The monitor tracks one temperature probe and allows you to set an alarm temperature -- a wristwatch-like "beep beep" sounds repeatedly when the one exceeds the other. At first I thought the hole labeled "Adjust Alarm Temp" was a missing button, but it's actually a recessed philips-head screw, apparently connected to a rheostat. Why they didn't put a smallish knob on the thing is beyond me, but there it is. And, of course, each of the big knobs is connected to one of the two case fans for speed regulation.

This setup, crude though it is, is far more useful than I had anticipated. The temp monitor, obviously, is very handy for letting me know when I'm bordering on an uncommanded reboot, but the fan knobs are really where it's at. Their obvious purpose in quieting the case in low-temperature environments is nice enough, but it turns out that running both fans at full blast doesn't provide the greatest cooling when Cleveland is 90-odd degrees in the summer: I can actually knock a couple degrees Celsius off the CPU temp by slowing the intake fan considerably. This is very important on a day like today (high of 92 F), when a couple degrees Celsius is the difference between smooth sailing and an afternoon of swearing at the computer when the screen suddenly blanks and I start seeing POST output.

One last little nitpick at the case: the window-equipped side is secured with thumbscrews, plus a latch which can be locked (as can the plastic front door, for whatever that's worth). This latch rattles, which can be somewhat disconcerting, but it also is designed almost perfectly to snap your fingers as you release it. You have to exercise a little caution and/or use two hands to open the case up without taking a spring-loaded lever to your knuckles.

Overall, I'm very happy with the case so far. It has a few minor annoyances, a few somewhat larger annoyances, and a couple things which I expect to become annoyances in the future, but it looks decent, keeps my system cool, and has a couple extra bonuses as well.