12-25-2014, 09:45 PM
Sorry, I never followed up with this thread.
So like I said above, we ordered two of them thinking they'd make decent cheap boxes for our internal stuff. But after building one out, I don't think we'll be using them at all.
Overall biggest gripe: Not a whole lot of thought was put into the chassis layout.
This case was clearly designed with OEM-design cards in mind, as the airflow is completely backwards and the way it is laid out creates a ton of internal turbulence. Reference design cards absolutely won't work in this chassis.
You get to thinking maybe you can move the fans from the front to the middle, and flip the whole chassis around to make the airflow work with reference cards. The problem with this is that then you have nowhere to mount a PSU, as the space between the middle fans and the back of the chassis is not large enough for a PSU with all of the cables plugged in.
So we tried doing kind of a weird push/pull configuration, where we had two fans in the middle as intake fans, and one on the "front" as an exhaust fan, then ran all of the PSU cables through the left middle fan hole, but then we just ended up with a huge rat's nest of cables that really hindered air flow.
Other gripes:
- With six cards & six risers, it is a cabling nightmare. And that's just with one PSU, I can't even fathom the mess two PSUs would create.
- The risers do not fit securely into the PCI-e slots. There is a lot of play, and I'm constantly having to push them down. I do not trust it.
- There's nowhere to mount a hdd. I presume this is because they expect you to boot BAMT or Minux off a USB drive.
- The supplied Y-connector for the three Delta fans is really pushing the limits of what a molex connector can supply. They are 48W fans, which means 144W total draw. But a single molex connector can only supply a maximum of 132W.
- The top lid is held on by screws.
- It comes with rack ears, but has no rails. Why even bother with rack ears?
Bottom line, it's a very minimal chassis that was clearly designed by inexperienced miners. The chassis is very small, the layout is all wrong, the airflow really will only work with OEM-design cards, it is a cabling nightmare, and definitely would not work well in a rack.
It will probably work OK if you are a hobbyist and intend to keep this on a desk with the lid off, with a rat's nest of cables running everywhere. But it is not at all what I look for in a chassis, and does not work at all for my needs. I will probably just end up throwing mine on eBay.
So like I said above, we ordered two of them thinking they'd make decent cheap boxes for our internal stuff. But after building one out, I don't think we'll be using them at all.
Overall biggest gripe: Not a whole lot of thought was put into the chassis layout.
This case was clearly designed with OEM-design cards in mind, as the airflow is completely backwards and the way it is laid out creates a ton of internal turbulence. Reference design cards absolutely won't work in this chassis.
You get to thinking maybe you can move the fans from the front to the middle, and flip the whole chassis around to make the airflow work with reference cards. The problem with this is that then you have nowhere to mount a PSU, as the space between the middle fans and the back of the chassis is not large enough for a PSU with all of the cables plugged in.
So we tried doing kind of a weird push/pull configuration, where we had two fans in the middle as intake fans, and one on the "front" as an exhaust fan, then ran all of the PSU cables through the left middle fan hole, but then we just ended up with a huge rat's nest of cables that really hindered air flow.
Other gripes:
- With six cards & six risers, it is a cabling nightmare. And that's just with one PSU, I can't even fathom the mess two PSUs would create.
- The risers do not fit securely into the PCI-e slots. There is a lot of play, and I'm constantly having to push them down. I do not trust it.
- There's nowhere to mount a hdd. I presume this is because they expect you to boot BAMT or Minux off a USB drive.
- The supplied Y-connector for the three Delta fans is really pushing the limits of what a molex connector can supply. They are 48W fans, which means 144W total draw. But a single molex connector can only supply a maximum of 132W.
- The top lid is held on by screws.
- It comes with rack ears, but has no rails. Why even bother with rack ears?
Bottom line, it's a very minimal chassis that was clearly designed by inexperienced miners. The chassis is very small, the layout is all wrong, the airflow really will only work with OEM-design cards, it is a cabling nightmare, and definitely would not work well in a rack.
It will probably work OK if you are a hobbyist and intend to keep this on a desk with the lid off, with a rat's nest of cables running everywhere. But it is not at all what I look for in a chassis, and does not work at all for my needs. I will probably just end up throwing mine on eBay.