Cymae
08-03-2007, 04:22 AM
Review: Raidmax Sirius mid-tower case
http://www.raidmax.com/specs/Images/701_sirius/sirius.jpg
General:
Okay, when I built my new computer, I wanted a new case. So I looked at this one and I said "WOW! That looks hot!" With its tribal pattern and brushed aluminium finish, this case is the epitome of sexy (depending on your tastes I guess). It's different without being gaudy, and in the silver version, the contrast of black grills with a brushed silver finish and blue LEDs in the fans and front panels simply make me drool.
Ok, I have the silver version of the case, so my review will mainly focus on that, for the main reason that I’m not entirely sure of the colour of the black one inside etc.
But how does it fare practicality wise?
Key Features:
It's got 5 x 3.5" HDD bays, two of which are front mounted, three of which are side mounted. This setup isn't actually half bad. The only downside to it is that my side mounted HDDs are a little too close to my motherboard, which has the SATA ports facing the bay and there’s about a 3cm gap between the bays and the ports which makes it a teeny bit difficult to get in there, but that's not really the case's fault.
It has 5.25 front loading bays which are pretty nifty. This was one of my favourite features of this case, I really want it to have plenty of 5.25 bays because I have a lot of junk to put in there.
The whole thing has neat and tidy back clips to close all your bays and ports at the back. The black clips are very functional, and make it really easy to pop stuff in and out without a screwdriver, and the fact that they're black matches the whole black/silver motif of the case.
It comes with 2x120mm blue LED fans at the front and back and a 3pin 80mm blue LED fan on the side. This provides good airflow, and isn't half bad noise wise, though only the side fan has a 3pin connector, the others are standard molexes, which annoys me a little as I wanted to connect them to a multifunction panel for fan speed control and now I'm going to have to buy new fans.
The Sirius has a front panel which neatly closes over the drive bays with a magnetic grip down the right side. This front panel has 3 gauges on it. One shows you fan RPM, one shows you a temperature (Celsius and Fahrenheit both indicated), and the third shows you HDD movement.
This would ordinarily be pretty cool functionality, except the only fan that has the 3pin connector required to connect to the front panel is the teeny weeny 80mm side fan, so you're stuck with that. The front panel DOES however come with a temperature sensor which you can jam anywhere (Mine's in the main heatsink), and the HDD gauge is actually quite useful. The HDD led can't be seen when your front panel is closed, so the handy dandy HDD gauge flickers briefly when your HDD light is flickering. That's pretty cool so you don't have to leave it open to see what's going on.
This is an aluminium case. It's not incredibly sturdy, but provided you don't punch it, it'll hold your stuff nicely without adding extra weight, which is pretty good, as it's a mid tower, not a tank of a full tower. Even I can lift it!
Other Features:
The thing I really like about this case is that all the windows are black mesh, and NOT plexi, so the whole thing is much more breathable than your average windowed case. Granted, you can't see crystal clearly into it, but put a few pretty lights inside and it's not really that bad. It has both a side window and a top window for extra ventilation! The side window has a really looking chrome fan grill though, which doesn't match the case and looks pretty hideous with the Raidmax logo. This is pretty stupid in the first place because the fan is mounted behind the grill so you can’t catch little fingers in there anyway. It CAN however be easily removed or replaced, so at least that's good.
Comes with thumb screws! There's really no need for a screwdriver on this case unless you decide to take the front panel off, everything else clips in except for the side panels which use a set of four silver thumb screws. I think these would be cooler in black...but that's just personal preference
Cons:
Ok. I had a problem with my front panel when I got it, one of the gauges wasn't working and I had to ship it back for a replacement. Before I did that, I thought I'd take a quick look inside the front panel door to see if I could fix it. I was shocked to find:
1. The ENTIRITY of the interior of the front panel door is not made of aluminium. It's not even made of metal. It's made of cheap plastic. Once more, once I unscrewed it to look inside, and....
2. One of the black grills for the front panel fell out! The front panel grills are held on with a hot glue gun and hide cheap white plastic. Raidmax didn't even bother trying to at least spray-paint this silver
3. The gauges are cheap grade plastic. One of them was loose and it looked pretty shabby and lopsided when I put everything back together.
4. The front panel is controlled by a small circuit board which operates each gauge. That's well and fine, but it seems a little over-complicated, as if I want to fix one gauge I have to tinker with the whole thing.
I was pretty disappointed with the overall terrible workmanship in what was supposed to be a quality case in an area that most people don't look in and just assume is fine. It makes me feel kind of ripped off.
Another con is the fan alarm. The bloody case is set to let off a shrill alarm if you unplug the fan connected to the front panel while the computer is turned on. This is presumably so your pc doesn't fry, but the connector's loose and I have to turn my PC off before I open the side of it so it doesn’t squeal at me, and believe me, it's LOUD. I can understand and maybe appreciate this feature, but it feels like a bit of a slap around when they only gave you a 3pin connector with the tiny little 80mm side fan!
The manual for this case is abysmal at best. It consists of an A4 piece of glossy paper showing you how to open the clips, and I didn't even understand THAT until somebody showed me. It has absolutely no instructions on installing the front panel, and to somebody who's never had to operate those gauges before, it's pretty difficult. No schematics, no troubleshooting options, no nothing, just that A4 page that shows you on pretty glossy paper how to unclip the drive bays.
I actually contacted Raidmax on this issue, and asked if they could provide me with more detailed schematics to see how I could fix a problem with the gauges that I was having. They told me that their manual was available on the site. The link was broken and I can bet that it was the same clip diagram I received in the box.
Price:
I paid $199 AUD for this case. On top of that I paid $35 shipping and then another $35 to ship back the front panel that they sent me which was faulty. I wasn't very impressed at paying $269 for a $199 case. Overall, it's almost worth it. If you're in love with the design, then go for it, it is a great looking case, and it's got decent internals, but I wouldn't buy it just if I was looking at functionality, I don't think it's worth it. I can get the Antec Nine Hundred for nearly the same price (a little cheaper in fact) and at least I know it's not going to fall apart.
Overall rating: 7.5/10
Rationalization:
It's not a bad case, it's pretty sleek and gorgeous, but those front gauges kind of ruin it for me. The fact that the front panel is so horrendously put together is a bit of a worry when you pay so much for a case like this. On the other hand, all the internal clips work great and everything’s easy to slide in and out, though I’ve found the side panels get a little bent out of shape if you open it too often. The manual problem set me back quite a bit, it took me awhile to work out where everything went, but I got it in the end (after sending back the first front panel which was determined to have a manufacturing fault). It's got plenty of bays, it's pretty roomy, and it's light.
http://www.raidmax.com/specs/Images/701_sirius/sirius.jpg
General:
Okay, when I built my new computer, I wanted a new case. So I looked at this one and I said "WOW! That looks hot!" With its tribal pattern and brushed aluminium finish, this case is the epitome of sexy (depending on your tastes I guess). It's different without being gaudy, and in the silver version, the contrast of black grills with a brushed silver finish and blue LEDs in the fans and front panels simply make me drool.
Ok, I have the silver version of the case, so my review will mainly focus on that, for the main reason that I’m not entirely sure of the colour of the black one inside etc.
But how does it fare practicality wise?
Key Features:
It's got 5 x 3.5" HDD bays, two of which are front mounted, three of which are side mounted. This setup isn't actually half bad. The only downside to it is that my side mounted HDDs are a little too close to my motherboard, which has the SATA ports facing the bay and there’s about a 3cm gap between the bays and the ports which makes it a teeny bit difficult to get in there, but that's not really the case's fault.
It has 5.25 front loading bays which are pretty nifty. This was one of my favourite features of this case, I really want it to have plenty of 5.25 bays because I have a lot of junk to put in there.
The whole thing has neat and tidy back clips to close all your bays and ports at the back. The black clips are very functional, and make it really easy to pop stuff in and out without a screwdriver, and the fact that they're black matches the whole black/silver motif of the case.
It comes with 2x120mm blue LED fans at the front and back and a 3pin 80mm blue LED fan on the side. This provides good airflow, and isn't half bad noise wise, though only the side fan has a 3pin connector, the others are standard molexes, which annoys me a little as I wanted to connect them to a multifunction panel for fan speed control and now I'm going to have to buy new fans.
The Sirius has a front panel which neatly closes over the drive bays with a magnetic grip down the right side. This front panel has 3 gauges on it. One shows you fan RPM, one shows you a temperature (Celsius and Fahrenheit both indicated), and the third shows you HDD movement.
This would ordinarily be pretty cool functionality, except the only fan that has the 3pin connector required to connect to the front panel is the teeny weeny 80mm side fan, so you're stuck with that. The front panel DOES however come with a temperature sensor which you can jam anywhere (Mine's in the main heatsink), and the HDD gauge is actually quite useful. The HDD led can't be seen when your front panel is closed, so the handy dandy HDD gauge flickers briefly when your HDD light is flickering. That's pretty cool so you don't have to leave it open to see what's going on.
This is an aluminium case. It's not incredibly sturdy, but provided you don't punch it, it'll hold your stuff nicely without adding extra weight, which is pretty good, as it's a mid tower, not a tank of a full tower. Even I can lift it!
Other Features:
The thing I really like about this case is that all the windows are black mesh, and NOT plexi, so the whole thing is much more breathable than your average windowed case. Granted, you can't see crystal clearly into it, but put a few pretty lights inside and it's not really that bad. It has both a side window and a top window for extra ventilation! The side window has a really looking chrome fan grill though, which doesn't match the case and looks pretty hideous with the Raidmax logo. This is pretty stupid in the first place because the fan is mounted behind the grill so you can’t catch little fingers in there anyway. It CAN however be easily removed or replaced, so at least that's good.
Comes with thumb screws! There's really no need for a screwdriver on this case unless you decide to take the front panel off, everything else clips in except for the side panels which use a set of four silver thumb screws. I think these would be cooler in black...but that's just personal preference
Cons:
Ok. I had a problem with my front panel when I got it, one of the gauges wasn't working and I had to ship it back for a replacement. Before I did that, I thought I'd take a quick look inside the front panel door to see if I could fix it. I was shocked to find:
1. The ENTIRITY of the interior of the front panel door is not made of aluminium. It's not even made of metal. It's made of cheap plastic. Once more, once I unscrewed it to look inside, and....
2. One of the black grills for the front panel fell out! The front panel grills are held on with a hot glue gun and hide cheap white plastic. Raidmax didn't even bother trying to at least spray-paint this silver
3. The gauges are cheap grade plastic. One of them was loose and it looked pretty shabby and lopsided when I put everything back together.
4. The front panel is controlled by a small circuit board which operates each gauge. That's well and fine, but it seems a little over-complicated, as if I want to fix one gauge I have to tinker with the whole thing.
I was pretty disappointed with the overall terrible workmanship in what was supposed to be a quality case in an area that most people don't look in and just assume is fine. It makes me feel kind of ripped off.
Another con is the fan alarm. The bloody case is set to let off a shrill alarm if you unplug the fan connected to the front panel while the computer is turned on. This is presumably so your pc doesn't fry, but the connector's loose and I have to turn my PC off before I open the side of it so it doesn’t squeal at me, and believe me, it's LOUD. I can understand and maybe appreciate this feature, but it feels like a bit of a slap around when they only gave you a 3pin connector with the tiny little 80mm side fan!
The manual for this case is abysmal at best. It consists of an A4 piece of glossy paper showing you how to open the clips, and I didn't even understand THAT until somebody showed me. It has absolutely no instructions on installing the front panel, and to somebody who's never had to operate those gauges before, it's pretty difficult. No schematics, no troubleshooting options, no nothing, just that A4 page that shows you on pretty glossy paper how to unclip the drive bays.
I actually contacted Raidmax on this issue, and asked if they could provide me with more detailed schematics to see how I could fix a problem with the gauges that I was having. They told me that their manual was available on the site. The link was broken and I can bet that it was the same clip diagram I received in the box.
Price:
I paid $199 AUD for this case. On top of that I paid $35 shipping and then another $35 to ship back the front panel that they sent me which was faulty. I wasn't very impressed at paying $269 for a $199 case. Overall, it's almost worth it. If you're in love with the design, then go for it, it is a great looking case, and it's got decent internals, but I wouldn't buy it just if I was looking at functionality, I don't think it's worth it. I can get the Antec Nine Hundred for nearly the same price (a little cheaper in fact) and at least I know it's not going to fall apart.
Overall rating: 7.5/10
Rationalization:
It's not a bad case, it's pretty sleek and gorgeous, but those front gauges kind of ruin it for me. The fact that the front panel is so horrendously put together is a bit of a worry when you pay so much for a case like this. On the other hand, all the internal clips work great and everything’s easy to slide in and out, though I’ve found the side panels get a little bent out of shape if you open it too often. The manual problem set me back quite a bit, it took me awhile to work out where everything went, but I got it in the end (after sending back the first front panel which was determined to have a manufacturing fault). It's got plenty of bays, it's pretty roomy, and it's light.