Donate: Rosewill/Cooltek/Jonsbo U3 and V4 mATX case reviews

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UK_Peter
Posts: 69
Joined: Mon May 26, 2014 6:16 am
Location: Great Britain

Donate: Rosewill/Cooltek/Jonsbo U3 and V4 mATX case reviews

Post by UK_Peter » Sun Jun 29, 2014 8:35 am

I'd like to propose reviews of these two fairly-small mATX cases (also available in black and red):

U3 mATX/ITX case
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V4 mATX/ITX case
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A quick explanation on the maker names: Jonsbo manufacture the cases. Cooltek sell them in Europe, Rosewill in USA. The U3 is just about to be launched in Europe in July, so interest in the case is likely to increase.

I've spoken to Jonsbo and they are willing to consider donating a case for review.

They also have a number of other interesting looking cases, particularly ITX ones. It'd be interesting to see how polished they are to use, how quiet, and what the airflow's like.
The not-yet-released Jonsbo V7 looks especially interesting and is contructed of thicker metal than the cases above.

I'll pledge $30 towards reviews.

gaidal
Posts: 45
Joined: Sun Jun 15, 2014 7:24 am

Re: Donate: Rosewill/Cooltek/Jonsbo U3 and V4 mATX case revi

Post by gaidal » Wed Jul 16, 2014 4:54 am

Good idea! This is not a good time for donations for me but I'll at least pledge $15 so more people can know about this nice case...

While waiting I'll try to answer any questions potential buyers might have, about the V3.

* Fingerprints are very obvious on the black model, under direct light. I normally can't see them even if I try, it depends on your lighting.
* The PSU is mounted sideways, which probably isn't the best for removing hot air. With a maxed i5-4690K and no case fans, the top of the case is warm to the touch.
* An ATX PSU can certainly fit but I wouldn't recommend it as it would take up most of the empty space and generally make things more difficult.
* Out of the box, the case only supports a row of 40mm fans. It might be a better idea to attach a large fan to the bottom plate, this should be easy if you only use one disk.

And by the way, warning: SilverStone ST45SF-G is a rather loud SFX PSU so let's avoid it... :-)

endeavour1934
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Aug 13, 2012 7:55 am

Re: Donate: Rosewill/Cooltek/Jonsbo U3 and V4 mATX case revi

Post by endeavour1934 » Sun Sep 07, 2014 2:23 pm

I got recently the U3 (MicroATX), and it's a great case, probably the most beautiful case I ever had, and very silent too.

Some thoughts about it:

- It's beautiful and the build quality is great. The interior is shockingly simple.

- Cooling is better than it seems. Using a TR Macho, the rear fan is so close to the heatsink that it works like a push/pull configuration (see photos on the link below). With a good heatsink, you should be able to run a whole powerful system with just one fan (CPU or rear). I have a i7-3770k OCed to 4.2GHz. With light use (web browsing) the CPU is just 6ºC above room temp with both the TY140 and rear (120mm) fans spinning at 600rpm. The video card has good ventilation too, because the bottom of the case is perforated and there isn't much distance between them. It works great with a passive or semipassive card, and is perfect for a silent powerful card (Asus 670, MSI 770...)

- There isn't much room for Hard Drives/SSDs: 3x2.5" or 2x3.5" or 1x3.5"+2x2.5". But that's expected given the size of the case. Now I have 1 SSD and 1 2.5" HDD drive and it's a great combination. You should be able to fit more SSDs inside if you tape them (with an adhesive thermal pad for example) to the inner sides, there is plenty of space for that.
- It has a switch to manually adjust fans to 7/9/12v, but I removed it because I prefer to use ASUS FanXpert to control both CPU and Rear fans.

- You have to be very careful with your hardware choices. Everything is very tight inside the case, and some hardware combinations may not fit. For example, if you use a TR Macho you can't use a 3.5" HD on the side HDD tray. On the plus side, you can use whatever PSU you like, it has a lot of space for it.

- It's a bit of a pain to assemble. To replace a long videocard you may need to remove the CPU heatsink first. SATA cables are hard to plug on the new sideways motherboard SATA plugs. You may need to plug them before installing the motherboard.

- It only has holes for 5 of the 8 MicroATX screws. The other 3 use plastic standoffs. You shoud tighten very well the MB main standoffs and use rubber stickers under the plastic standoffs, because otherwise the case can hum if you use a videocard that produces a lot of vibrations (you shoudn't use that kind of video card in the first place!)


Here are 3 pics of my case, so you can see the very tight fit of a TR Macho: http://imgur.com/a/sJ4BS

Also, watch this guy putting inside this small case a Socket 2011 MB/CPU + liquid cooler + GTX Titan + 2 SSDs + 2 HDDs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF4OzlPuH98
Again, a very (very!!!) tight fit, but this config gives a good idea of how much heat this case can manage.

So, for 70€ you can have one of the most beautiful cases ever, which is also very silent and has good cooling abilities.

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