Buy Low Price From Here Now
Main Features
Readmore
Technical Details
- Product #: A100BB270- Manufacturer: Athenatech
- Manufacturer Item #: A100BB.270
- UPC: 875783001014
See more technical details
By Directed Energy (USA)
The Athena "Micro ATX 270W Black" PC case has a nice appearance. It is well packaged from the factory with an additional plastic wrap (see photo) other than the large plastic bag that the case is placed in. To help mitigate scratching the case exterior, I was able to remove the main case cover and leave the rest of the plastic wrap in place while assembling the computer. The case comes with instructions but which screw is used in any given location of the case is not well indicated (see photo).
On the exterior, the blue power LED light bar is too bright and over powers the yellow hard drive LED (see photo). For that reason, I decided to disconnect the blue power LED light bar. The front cover does not snap into place well, and has me worried that it will eventually come loose if removed too often.
On the interior, this Athena case does not seem to be fully micro ATX compliant as not all four memory slots on a Intel DP55SB mother board can be used in the case's native form (see photo). That's regardless of any heat sink that may be mounted to the system DRAM. Hence it was necessary for me to saw off ~5/8 of an inch of metal from two sides of the external drive cage (see photo) in order to use the 4th memory slot. This procedure took some time as the cage can flex during sawing. Also, be sure not to saw off too much material or one side of the drive cage will lose a fair amount of rigidity (see photo).
The removeable external drive cage is fitted with an ATech ProGear XM-5U card reader and a Plextor PX-B320SA Blu-ray DVD/CDROM unit. With the Intel Core3 i7 860 CPU and stock fan combination, it was very easy to fit a standard size DVD/CDROM player into the Athena case (see photo).
The case would benefit by being ~1/2 longer in length. That way, all the RAM on the mother board can fit without modifying the case, and allow for easer installation of a power supply upgrade. Although possible, it was difficult and very time consuming to fit an upgrade Ultra 400 Watt mATX power supply with two hard drives opposite (see photo). To get the SATA connector to fit on the bottom drive, it was necessary to flex the SATA connector ~1mm inboard and the 24 pin power connecter about 1mm down.
The two internal drive locations are in the far corner of the case away from any fans and or possible fan mounting points (see photo). If the manufacturer were to relocate the external front audio and USB ports (see photo), this would help mitigate some of the air circulation difficulties when two internal hard drives are installed. To help the thermal currents in the case and to cool the hard drives better, I have turned the case upside down (no impact on function) with the two hard drives and power supply sitting on the bottom of the case (see photo).
Although very tight (see photo), I was able to get a fair number of components installed into this small case without any overheating problems. With an ambient room temperature of 70.9 degrees, the CPU is running at 88.3F, hard drives at 94.4F and 93.6F and video board at 90.6F as per a Kintrex IRT0421 Thermometer. It took a number of iterations to find the best wire path for the power and drive cables, but in the end, I was able to get everything to fit, and work well.
Be very cautious when reaching into this case around the preformed case perimeter EMI shielding. There is a piece of this shielding located under the external drive cage that is not readily visible and very sharp along the edge (see photo). It was only a matter of a couple a minutes before I discovered this metal part as it cut my finger with ease (see photo).
Last, this case comes supplied with only two 60mm rear case fans (see photo) and no fan in front to help push air through a populated case. To be fare, the case has a 3.5x5.5 inch screen vent on the removable side panel which lets in the free flow of air. Since I have installed a RAID 1 in the case, I will cover this side vent with some sort of black foam to lower the noise level of the computer. Hence, in my application, a front fan becomes a critical need.
The Athena case is populated with the following parts and upgrades:
Ultra mATX 400W Modular Power Supply
Intel DP55SB mATX, LGA-1156 motherboard with RAID
Intel Core3 i7 860 2.8Ghz CPU
(4) Patriot Sector 5, 2GB PC-1600Mhz DDR3 12800
(2) Hitachi Deskstar HD32000, SATA 2TB 7200RPM hard drives
Sparkle PCIe 2.0 nVidia G240, 1GB video card
AVer PCIe HD TV/FM video capture card
Plextor Blu-ray SATA DVD-CD burner
ATech ProGear XM-5U Internal Card Reader
Thermaltake TMG SL 1 Blue LED PCI slot fan
Enermax 80mm Marathon magnetic bearing case fan
All things remaining the same, I recommend this product. Order was promptly filed and shipped from [...]
Minus 0.25 for the plastic front cover not snapping into place.
Minus 0.25 for the unfinished sharp metal edges inside the case.
Minus 0.25 for the external drive cage interfering with DRAM slot 4.
Minus 0.25 for the blue case power LED over powering the yellow HD LED.
By R. Bornstein
The photograph of this case doesn't really do it justice. This is one of the nicest looking PC cases I've used - and I've built quite a few units. All the components are top quality: The power supply is adequate to support a very powerful system; the fans are silent but very effective at cooling the unit, and the drive bays pull out for easy installation (a big plus in a unit this small as I've usually nearly broken my hands trying to squeeze a system in a case this small).
There are a few very important things to remember if you want to buy this case and build your system. First: remember, it is a very small case and that means you need to get small components. While micro-atx boards run up to 9.6" x 9.6" and will "conceivably" fit this case, definitely don't get one. You will fit the board in but I can't see how you'll get the RAM, CPU, and drives to fit. I used a Biostar P4M800M7A Intel Socket 775 MicroATX Motherboard, which is tiny but full featured. I love this board, I've built a half dozen systems with it and I've never had a problem. It doesn't take dual-channel RAM, but it does take Dual Core Pentium D processors, and is very affordable. I put in a Pentium D 805 (also an incredible bargain) and clocked it a 3.2 GHZ. The system is unbelievably fast and stable.
Second: get a a very short DVD-RW drive. The fact is that nothing other than a Lite-On and some Sony's will fit. Any other drive will smash into the CPU fan and will stick about 4 inches out of the front (you'll never get the face plate on).
Third: use a SATA drive if you can. As previously stated, the drive bays are incredibly well designed, but having those thin SATA cables is a big plus in such a tight space.
Fourth: Though there is room for a second hard drive, I personally would not install one. The cabling will get crazy and you will be pushing the power supply, especially if you want to install a good video card and some PCI cards. I installed a Radeon 9600, a USB PCI (the system already has 6 ports, but I hate hubs and have a lot of peripherals), and a Firewire PCI.
Finally, if you want to get a third party heatsink/fan, I would go with the CoolerMaster X15-9IDSA. It costs $10 at Amazon, is small enough to fit the system, offers much better cooling, and is much quieter than the stock fan.
There is only one problem with this case and that is that the front panel pops off easily. I'm used to front panels you have to carefully pry off with all of your strength (even after releasing the clips), and pray that nothing breaks. This has the opposite problem. I found the solution is to find some fat screws and lodge them in the center of the retaining clips after the front plate is reattached.
If you are planning on builing an AMD based system I would suggest getting an MSI board. The K8MM-V is very solid and is actually a few hairs smaller than the Biostar. It's a 754 socket, but there are similar 939 versions. I wouldn't build an AM2 system. I've yet to find a reliable micro-atx AM2 motherboard. The AMD stock fan is quieter, smaller, and more efficient than Intel's stock 775, so you can skip buying an aftermarket version. Using these (or similar) configurations you should be able to fit everything in this case and have a beautiful, very fast system.
Images Product
Buy Micro Atx 270W Black Now
No comments:
Post a Comment