There is an opinion that the computer case is not necessary and you don’t need to choose: what is there, a piece of iron, four walls, the bottom and the lid, it is better to save on it and take some “non -me”, but buy a video card better. In the comments, you often express the opinion that expensive buildings are a show off. We believe that a good corps will not only extend life to components, but also survive several generations of processors and video cards.
You really need to invest in the computer case. In the article “Iron Felix” we told what to pay attention to when choosing a computer case, and now we are ready to prove that a high -quality “box” with good cooling is the basis of the entire system. We picked up three Middle Tower form factors at a price of up to 5,000 rubles and tested them in the case.
Cooler Master HAF 922
Cooler Master HAF 922 – one of the few stylish and functional buildings. In terms of dimensions, it is more than the standard Middle Tower, greatly reminiscent of his older brother from the Full Tower line, HAF 932. Cooler Master has chosen brutal style: many corners, frequent grille and relief sides. HAF 922 is painted black, only on the front panel there is a mirror logo.
There are five compartments for 5.25-inch devices in the upper part of the front, one of them can be turned into a 3.5-inch slot-for example, for a cardrider. There are five more compartments in the lower part of the case-for hard drives, and at the very base there is a 200-mm fan for cooling hard drives.
The panel with additional ports and buttons is placed on top. There are two USB, ESATA, headphones and microphone connectors. From the control set of only the power buttons and the red backlight shutdown.
The side walls are interestingly made: they are squeezed out, which increases the space inside the case. The right wall is solid, but on the left there is a grate of ventilation and a landing place for a pair of 120 mm coolers or one 200-mm is organized. The screwdriver is not needed: the covers are attached with two screws with enlarged heads.
Inside the HAF 922 is made neatly. As already mentioned, the case is longer than the usual Middle Tower, and even a huge Radeon HD 5970 climbs here without any problems. The issue with the organization of cables was successfully resolved: on the right side of the case, under the motherboard, fasteners are placed and free space is left – to hide the wires there, it is enough to unscrew the side cover.
The latches on the 5.25-inch slots are made conveniently made: you need to remove the lattice plug from the front panel, put the device inside and press the button that extends the fastening screws. With hard disks is more difficult, they are placed on special sledges, and the front part is to you, and the connectors from you. Thus, it will not work to quickly replace the hard drive: it will be necessary to remove the second side cover and turn off the wires on the right side of the case.
The number of expansion boards is standard – seven holes. They are attached with the same screws with enlarged heads as the side covers. A hole is also provided for an additional fee with USB or FireWire – parallel to the motherboard, on the side of the seats for expansion cards. Place for a power supply – below, where the coldest.
We liked the bar for installing the motherboard. It is cut not only on many holes for wiring cables, but also an additional window from above – for free access to the back of the processor socket. If you have a cooler with an additional mounting bar, then in order to install it, you do not have to completely disassemble the computer and remove the motherboard, you only need to push the right side cover.
How are things with cooling? “HAF” deciphens as “High Air Flow” – “good air circulation”. A 200-mm fan, behind, on the front, for blowing, is 120 mm. For a couple they create a decent draft in the case. This will be especially liked by processor coolers with a lateral arrangement of fans like Cooler Master Hyper N620 , which was installed on our test stand.
An additional air outflow provides another 200-mm fan installed on the top cover. If this is not enough for you, then you can still equip the 200-mm turntable with the left side cover and 120 mm-the base. If desired, you can put a water cooling system, the necessary holes are.
Lancool Dragon Lord PC-K58
Mark Lancool poorly known in our country. But everyone knows its owner well, Taiwanese company Lian Li. In the computer world, Lian Li is like Bentley Motors in the world of cars. This is a manufacturer of high -class buildings known for excellent quality – and exorbitant prices. But in one market of top products you will not go far, other sectors must be covered – for this, Lancool was created.
Externally Dragon Lord PC-K58 – The exact opposite of HAF 922. If the designers of Cooler Master applied their case with light bulbs and increased threatening forms, then in Lancool they rely on a representative view. In the photographs, this case is like two drops of water like a Full Tower Corpus Lian Li: a strict black tower, a characteristic silhouette, a frequent plastic lattice on the front side. In general, if not for the size and standard materials, the case would not be distinguished from the flagship Lian Li. True, there is too much plastic. If only the front panel is made in HAF 922, then here is also the entire upper part of the case. From designer delights only Lancool logo on the top cover.
There are five compartments on the front panel for installing 5.25-inch devices and, strangely, not a single seat for a 3.5-inch card from a card from the format-you will have to buy special adapters. Control buttons, a pair of USB external ports and two audio defects, like Cooler Master, are made up, so it is best to put Dragon Lord under the table so as not to reach for the buttons of turning on and reboot.
Remove the side cover. There is much less space here than in HAF 922, HD 5970 obviously will not fit. But everything was done in the highest category: the edges are neatly smoothed out, not a single sharp angle, it is very pleasant to collect. The power supply is placed down on special rubberized stands so that no side touches the case itself and gives it extra vibrations. A hole for the air of air from under the BP is taken by a neat dustproof grid, which was not observed in HAF 922.
But with the bar under the motherboard we were unlucky. It is made qualitatively-there are holes for removing advanced coolers, and fastening fastening, but here carving for screws of the stands is non-standard. Maybe we would not have paid attention to this, but it was in our model that there were no such stands, and they did not find a replacement – we had to cut a new thread for European screws. Fortunately, this is the only problem Dragon Lord PC-K58.
After installing the motherboard, everything went like clockwork. The large Radeon HD 4870 X2 got up perfectly, and no screws were needed for its fastening: there is a lever system that reliably presses the expansion board to the rear wall of the case. The tough disks compartment is based on removable slide. The discs are placed in the sling, the sluts are pushed into a special compartment at the bottom of the case and locked with one long bar. All fastenings are rubbed and protected from vibrations. The fastener system is also on a pair of 5.25-inch compartments, so you can assemble a computer without a screwdriver at all.
The Dragon Lord PC-K58 cooling system is inferior to HAF 922. There are only two fans of 120 mm Slots Charm Casino. One, on the front wall, works for a blowing, the second, on the back, – on blowing. The situation can be improved and a couple of 120-mm turntables on the top cover can be put.
Thermaltake Element G
Thermaltake – one Grand among the manufacturers of the buildings. The first thing that surprised was packaging. Of course, all our contestants had glossy boxes with beautiful printing, but Thermaltake was the only one who wrapped his body in a cloth cover so that nothing scratches. And this despite the fact that Element g not glossy, but black, matte, with a red insert along the edge.
Element G form is very different from Lancool and Cooler Master. The front panel is drowned deeper and closed with a small grate, a massive plastic kant is forward. Above, at a slight angle, there are four USB ports and audio troops. Nearby are the power, restart buttons and the fan rotation speed regulator (about it just below).
Inside, the case looks interesting: unlike the previous two models, the insides of Element G are painted not in gray, but black, in tone to facial surfaces. The main compartment is divided into two parts of a metal bar separating the power supply (from below) from the motherboard (from above), this helps to carefully lay the entire wiring. But there are too many sharp edges, during the next assembly we even managed to cut ourselves about one of them – Cooler Master and Lancool did not sin with such things.
To install a power supply, a metal plug in the central compartment will have to be removed. Unlike competitors, Element G is equipped with three BP guides, which complicates the assembly, but tightly fixes the block in the right place.
The installation of the motherboard passed without problems. There is also a window for dismantling the cooler without removing the chipset – but there is no talk of laying wires behind the bar for the motherboard, you will have to carefully lay out the cables inside the case. This is a minus: they will interfere with air circulation.
The fasteners of the hard drives are original: first you need to fasten four branded screws with a thickened head to the hard drive, and then squeeze it along the guides into the compartment. To free the disk, you just need to bend a special tongue. Convenient, but if you lose such screws, it will be difficult to find a replacement later. With 5.25-inch devices, they did not begin to wise and offer to use ordinary screws.
By the device of the Element G cooling system, he will easily argue with Cooler Master Haf 922. Fresh air picks up a 200-mm fan on the front wall and 230 mm cooler on the side cover. A 200-mm turntable on the top panel and 140 mm-on the back wall work on the blowing. If desired, the system can be improved by adding a pair of 60 mm coolers to cool video cards. There are also entrances for pipe pipe, only they are made too rude. While they were protected in Cooler Master and Lancool with rubber plugs, in Thermaltake they limited themselves to simple holes on the back wall, and this can greatly harm the pipes with the liquid.
Finally, we will talk about the regulator on the front panel, which is responsible for the speed of the fans and the backlight. If the HAF 922 knows how to glow only in red, then the front and upper fans on Element G can burn green, blue and red.
From the screw
The appearance and convenience of assembly are important things, but the task of our review is to determine how the housings are blown up and which of them is more effective. To do this, we tested hot components. The system was assembled on the basis of the motherboard MSI X58 Platinum. CPU Intel Core i7-920 worked as a regular mode at 2.66 GHz and at a frequency of up to 3.6 GHz. Cool his effective cooler Master Hyper N620 cooler with a double active cooling system, installed just on the way of air flows. RAM Kingston Hyperx DDR3-1666 We had three planks of 2 GB. Since the hottest modern board, Radeon HD 5970, fit only in the HAF 922 case, we used for tests Radeon HD 4870 X2 , which is also very warming. The hard drive was the most common – Seagate Barracuda at 7200 rpm. The system worked from power supply Thermaltake Evo_blue 750w , Managed Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit.
The tests were simple. The processor was loaded with the program Linpack , and the temperature was fixed with a utility Real Temp 3.50. We worked as follows with the video card: we launched a synthetic test three times in a row 3DMark06 and measured the heating of the nuclei through Rivatuner 2.24C.
Initially, we had the idea to test the housings in the maximum configuration: put several additional coolers on all seats and check everything. However, there were a lot of all kinds of configurations, and in order not to provoke unnecessary disputes about the correct distribution of flows, we limited ourselves to standard equipment.
We will fight?
Cooler Master Haf 922 was the first to test: large fans spun quite slowly and not too nois. At a frequency of 3.6 GHz, the temperature on the Core i7 920 rose only to 77 ° C – and this is under our strict conditions. The temperature of the nuclei of the video card did not rise above 90 ° C, which is very good for such a powerful board.
Dragon Lord PC-K58 went to the test stand next to the test stand. Despite the threatening name and serious appearance, Lancool was sorted out of the Cooler Master. Due to a clear deficiency of fans, the temperature on the processor rose to 83 ° C, and on the video card reached 95 ° C.
On Thermaltake Element G, we have high hopes. There was no doubt that he would bypass the Dragon Lord PC-K58, it was interesting to see how he would cope with HAF 922. It turned out that no way: the additional fan on the side wall did not help, and Element G ended the tests with the results of 80 ° C and 96 ° C, respectively.
* * *
As you can see, you should choose a fairly spacious metal case with a competent fastener system and laying of cables, neatly processed sections and fans of large diameter. If you plan to often assemble, choose a system, we advise you to buy a case with mounts on screws (preferably the most ordinary ones that are not scary to lose): it is less likely that they will break from constant twitching back and forth.
It is better not to experiment with the cooling system yourself. As our tests show, there are enough coolers correctly installed at the factory to ensure good ventilation of the case – do not forget that, randomly stimulating the turntables, you can only harm. It is worth serious about your and additional coolers, if only you decide to take over: at the standard frequencies, the temperature in the buildings is almost the same, and the deviations can be attributed to the measurement error.
Table 1
Technical characteristics
Cooler Master HAF 9222LANCOOL DRAGON LORD PC-K58Thermaltake Element G
Appearance
Type of the case Middle Tower
Material SECC steel, plastic
Type of motherboard Microatx/ATX
Settles 3.5 inches 1 external, 5 internal 4 internal7 internal (+ 2 sluts for 2.5-inch discs)
Compartments of 5.25 inches 5 external 5 external 3 external
The number of expansion boards 7+187
Complete cooling 1x 200 mm – the front wall, 1x 200 mm – the upper cover, 1x 120 mm – the rear wall1x 140 mm or 1x 120 mm – the front wall, 1x 120 mm – the rear wall1x 200 mm – the front wall, 1x 200 mm – the upper lid, 1x, 1x 230 mm – side cover, 1x 140 mm – rear wall
Additional seats 1x 140 mm or 1x 120 mm – from below, 1x 200 mm or 2x 12 0 mm – the side cover 2x or 2x 120 mm – the upper cover (special mounts are required) 2x 120 mm – the front wall, 2x 60 mm – the back wall
Input/output panel 2x USB 2.0, esata, audio2x usb 2.0, audio4x USB 2.0, audio
Dimensions 502x563x253 mm496x498x214 mm480x521x230 mm
Weight 8.7 kg9.45 kg7.92 kg
Price 5200 rub.4000 rub.4500 rub.
Table 2
Temperature measured
Kulercore i7 920 (2.66 GHz) Core i7 920 (3.6 GHz) Radeon HD 4870 X2
Cooler Master HAF 922 54 77 90
Lancool Dragon Lord PC-K58 598395
Thermaltake Element G 587996