Kosh's Web Log

Possibly one of the best and worst cases i’ve played with recently.

I like the layout, and it’s fairly standard inside, Clips for the expansion cards, USB/Firewire on top and harddrive caddy.

I’ll give you what I don’t like about it, since if you’ve come here searching for this, that is what you are interested in.

Front “Doors” : The two hinged “doors” either side tend to pull the top of the case out, it’s hard to explain and i’m without photos at the moment (I may update later) but when you put pressure on the “door” the standoff it has pushes against the body and since the main body twists, it pulls the top “clip”, since the Armor Jr has a double front (doors, then a key to pull the whole front open and go medievel on the drive bays) it has clips top and bottom, and a key lock (standard, like the old-school floppy cases) to hold it closed, the top clip pops out Note: This may only be a problem on the Silver/Aluminium model.

Hard Drive Cage : The hard drive cage, which lets yousecure drives in the confort of your chair, and then slid the cage int othe case, seems not to sit as far as it should into the case, it is fine for IDE drives (who uses IDE these days anyway) but because of SATA cables being about 2cm of plug plus cable bend added on, they get pushed up against the window on the side, I think this will need photos as well.

Connectors : Beware ! The internal connectors come as individual pin connectors, with “non-standard” (or at least to me) naming.  I had to guess and prod the Audio to figure out which ones are which, and I haven’t tested it yet so we might findout i’m wrong, and becaose of the short leads from the cable to the plug on each pin they’re a challenge to get on right first time, and to stay on afterwards. I’m tempted to make a stndard header (or cut one off somewhere *whistles innocently*) and make an “adaptor” for the connectors.
Top USB/Firewire : This is a great thing and a annoyance in one, I was talking with a colleague about this.  The top ports allow you to plug in headphones, microphone, two USB or a Firewire device.  This is really great for access, especially for people like myself that leave out computers on the ground, but when you raise the dust cover all the plugs are exposed, so if you want to hook up you ipod, you get dust in all the other connectors at the same time.

Now that we have the dislikes out of the way.

2 Fans STANDARD : Fans = Good, ’nuff said

Windowed Side : well this should go in dislikes, but it’s just so pretty, especially with an overwanky Motherboard (read: ABIT Fatal1ty AN9 32x) and overwanky RAM (Corsair with activity LEDs for example)

Filtered Front : Nice removable filters over the front grills, Dust Bewarned !

Clippy “Screwless” Expansion slot clips : These were fiddly, as I am a man and incapable of reading an instruction manual, these clips I loosened the screws on when I first did it, until I realised the screws didn’t hold them in, they clip into the case.  Errrr moving right along.

Actually, that’s about it.

Overall a good case, but some nice little tweaks here and there would be good.