Page 14 - Conclusion

The Verdict

Today's conclusion isn't about who's number one in the review as .. well that would be silly. Each case reviewed today has a purpose in it's own segment. Each case serves a different audience and quite honestly each case will receive an editor's choice award as all of them are truly unique and offer features that are just flabbergasting at it's price level. Let's go over the cases one by one as the order that we did the review .. so we'll start off with the iCute Coollive case.

The iCute CooliveI was honestly impressed by this case the minute it came out of the package. The photo's do not serve justice here as to how incredible cute the casing is. Despite the huge fan it's extremely silent, the design in it's sheer black simple yet elegant looks make it one of the better cases ever reviewed. The idea of placing the PSU all the way at the front bottom of the casing is a little weird but it served a purpose .. making the design of the casing smaller and that works out really well. The case is not fancy aluminum chassis plated or anything. Do not expect luxury things like tool less design etc also. Not this is a case made for pure design, cooling and a great price. The only thing you'll hear coming from the case is the sound of air moving around as that huge fan just cools your components enormously. You would not expect it but SLi and Crossfire users ... this is something you might want to consider if you hate noise and large and flashy case designs. Nope, a exceedingly nice job indeed from iCute and hey .. it's dirt cheap at a MSRP of just ~40 USD.

April 11th, we made a correction to the price as it is slightly higher. And there's an availibility issue for Europe:

The Aspire X-Cruiser
When you look at Aspires cases they all seem to stand out from the rest. And so does the X-Cruiser. This guru's is a really fun case to own. It however was the most noisy casing of the batch. So if you dislike noise then it's not the casing for you and that includes lowering the fan speed with the fan controller. However do not let me exaggerate this though as the noise level coming from the X-Cruiser is similar to the average PC casing. The positive side here is that there is a  lot of airflow inside the casing that will ensure you some really decent cooling. Speaking of cooling, I found it to be interesting to find a small CPU duct on the side-panel. It'll ensure that your CPU will get some cold air from outside the PC through that funnel. It's in the little details I always say.

The looks however are funky and trendy. Once you power this rig up the cool blue LED colored fans and front-panel meters lit themselves and will stun you with their looks. What I found out later on is that the mainboard tray can be removed, a huge plus as it ensures easy installation. Inside the casing we see a standard metal chassis. No sharp edges or anything, really good layout to be honest. This case will offer you to insert a huge selection of driver which again is a big plus. I'm trying hard to find something negative here but if it's not "the case" then it's not eh ? No, two thumbs up for Aspire for this design. And the three meters at the front of the casing .. how cool do they look ! You can find this case for 69 USD, and that's just a great deal. Very much recommended.

The MGE/XG Viper 2
I stated that there will be no top 3 of cases today. Each case serves another purpose and reflects another consumer based on their demand and usability. For me the Viper 2 was an incredible case. Once you unpack it you'll notice the immense detail that's put into this case. Even the packaging has been done to ensure there's not a scratch on that casing. Once unpackaged you'll be like huh .. that's a cool case man. But once you power it up you'll go a little nuts as you have no idea how cool this case lights up. Red ambient light coming from inside the case and then there's the front bezel look of the casing .. look hard enough and you'll notice that it's shaped to the head of the viper snake. The case screams "danger" to you until you look at that really lovely LCD unit at the bottom. It's the head of the snake giving you all kinds of info's on temperatures and fan rotational speed and hey .. the case will even warn you when that temperature is passing a threshold that you can set.

Is there a downside to this casing ... there comes only one small item to mind ? Yes, the left window panel is secured into the side-panel way too loose. you can push the corners of the window easily to the inside. So that's not a good enough finish. But guys and girls ... this is the only "con" I could find as other then that this thing is nearing perfection.

The sound-levels are way below average, it's looking cool. You get the tool-less design for securing your PCI/AGP/PCX cards. And then the HD's .. you never mounted them secure so easy. You have loads of space to work in yet also plenty of space for all your drives as you could mount six HDs in there if you wanted to do such a thing. All that into an aluminum chassis that is light-weight and most of all conducting heat very well. There I said it .. this case is nearly perfect with a pricetag of roughly 99 USD and 139 USD with a 400 or even 500 Watts power supply.

So everyone, this concludes this little case ... see you again at our next article and a special thanks to iCute, Aspire and XG/MGE for submitting these cases for a review. We'll soon ahev some more cases to show you, among them the new Lian-Li's.

Hilbert