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Well, I've had my system up for about a week and so far, I've been quite happy with it. It's about as quiet as I was hoping for, fast and looks good.
The front bezel is slightly rounded out, where the center of the drive bay panels are bout 1/2" further out than the sides. I used this to my advantage with the Audigy 2 Platinum Live Drive front panel and recessed it a bit, so the buttons don't project past the bezel.
The power LED is really bright. It's about 25-50% as bright as one of those high intensity LED keychain flashlights. It can be seen on a wall over ten feet away and is more than sufficient to manuver around said room in complete darkness and you could probably read by it, though, I would not suggest it. =)
The fit and finish is not as refined as some other manufacturers, like InWin and the likes, so the edges inside the case are not rolled, or as de-burred as I would like.
Here's the specs:
GlobalWIN YCC-61F1-B (for 120mm fans, front and back),
Antec TruePower 550 Watt power supply,
Asus P4G8X Deluxe mainboard,
P4 2.66GHz 533MHz bus processor,
SLK900U with a 92mm Panaflo L1A (Artic Silver 2),
2x Panaflo 120mm L1A's for the case,
Maxtor Diamond Max 9 80GB ATA133 (Fluid Dynamic Bearings),
A Serial ATA to PATA adapter for the above hard drive,
2x512MB sticks of Corsair TWINX CAS 2-2-2-5-T1 rated matched memory,
Audigy 2 Platinum sound card (Black faceplate and buttons),
ATI AIW 9700 Raedeon Pro 128MB video card,
Toshiba 16x DVD-ROM (Black),
Sony 3.5" FDD (Black)
The seek noise from the Maxtor is louder than a Seagate, but, I can live with it. I've had some issues while using a Serial ATA to PATA adapter, so I've gone back to PATA.
System temperatures have been anywhere from the low 80's at idle to the highest of 104 degrees farenhiet after several hours of 3D gaming. These are taken from the BIOS screen, after doing an immediate reboot.
Problems: I am getting some EMI from this new computer that is affecting my tv (about two feet away) and one or both of my monitors, which are adjacent to each other, and both are within 2' of this new computer, and my older PIII 600EB. I had some problems with intereferance (horizontal banding with about a 5mm gap) on these monitors before with my other two computers, but, now it's a different, horizontal banding of about 1/2" gaps. With the tv set, I'm getting white dash like lines diagonally across the picture, some times criss crossing, on channels 2 thru 5.
I'll see about disconnecting the front and rear case fans, along with the CPU fan to see if it's the Panaflos making all the EMI. The fron and rear fan vents are comprised of 1/4" holes and that may be too large to contain the EMI from the case fans. Otherwise, it's either the power supply or the video card, I imagine. The video card I can solve by replacing it's heatsink and fan with a Zalman heatpipe. If it's the power supply, namely the power supply fans, then I'm stuck with buying a different one, or voiding the warranty and replacing the fans with different ones.
The only other problem I have had are with the ATI video drivers going into an infinate loop a couple times and locking up my system. This may be my problem with the SATA to PATA adapter, though, I seem to have less problems while running PATA. I am able to fold the ribbons for the all of the components out of the way of the airflow, so that's not an issue.
It's pretty crowded inside, with the front Audigy 2 Live drive bay, the Global WIN USB socket in front and I placed a Fire Wire slot up front behind the front door, under the USB ports. But, everything is routed out of the way of the airflow. It's not pretty inside (no wire ties or anything), but, there's no windows, so, who cares. =)
Externally, the finish is really nice. Really nice molding on the plastic bezel, nice LED's, and a really nice brushed/satin finish on the aluminum panels.
Overally, I'm very happy with this case.
Thanks,
CRT_Leech
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