CONTENTS:
02| Design & Building Experience
The aesthetics on this thing is a beauty! I really can’t look back at my Corsair Carbide 100R. I could just say I am spoilt.
The Pros
The body is made of brushed aluminum while the inners being made of steel. The see-through side panel is made of plastic though for those drooling of it being tempered glass. I don’t have any complaint though, especially for this price point. The case seems to be very minimalist, not trying to interfere with the seamless sheet of aluminum. There’s a single cut on the front of the case for DVD drives which suck the DVD in.
The Cons
Though, not everything which which great, does great! we had some pretty hefty issues with this case. We want to stick to getting straight to the reasons that we don’t like about this case as they seem pretty poor choices for such as well case.
Lets start off the complaints (in no particular order), Being it a premium looking case, it just seems like Armaggeddon didn’t take “Cable Mangement” properly into account. This is my biggest complaint which I really like to take into consideration when looking for a PC case. It was just impossible for me to route my 24 pin cable at the back of the case since the aluminum side panel at the back is just flat and too close to the motherboard tray which didn’t allow the side panel to sit flush. For those thinking, why not? Well, nice question, this case doesn’t use screws, instead they rely on these peg type of push-ins.
Moreover, since the aluminum side panel is silver. What I mean by this is yes, it looks awesome on the outside, but not on the inside! Hiding black cables on sliver aluminum is a messy affair, especially with those front panel connectors.
Q:So does your system have cables all around the place? At first, since I have a Non-Modular PSU, I tucked all the cables under the Hard Drive which still didn’t satisfy me. Next up, we changed our mind, we took all the unnecessary cables and placed them in the place of the intake fans at the front. I’ll clear that ahead why?
Second, the front panel connectors aren’t at front, they are located on the aluminum side panel behind the case. I guess I couldn’t even technically call them front panel connectors from now on. This is such an awkward position for many, even me to be honest. Almost every system I built has some sort of window side panel and I face it towards me for some occasional eye-candy and keeping an eye on my system. Being that, in my case. the power button and USB ports are the the opposite side which is a huge hassle for me. If if you don’t face your system towards you like me, and like to position your PC traditionally, then its your preference what you would like to call it.
Next up, the HDD cage, this is where I felt left out. Being an RM299/US$70 case, the Hard Drive cage isn’t removable which was a shame for me. They are secured by rivets which means, unless you are willing to do some modding or drilling in the case, you cant remove the cage which made a total blunder for me! Disabling me to use LED strips or even use my Watercooling reservoir which I think shouldn’t be done in this case in the first place. The work around I did was to mount the reservoir at the rear of the case allowing me to easily re-fill the reservoir and take me to the safe side if any leakage occurs well, that’s quite a plus.
Lastly, this is my last and most important thing I didn’t like about this case. Temperatures in this case are choking and its pretty evident why. Just to make it clear, we’ve been using Custom Watercooling in this rig to cool down my CPU(SHOUT OUT TO EMARQUE). Okay so why the high temperatures with watercooling? Quite franky, its the issue with the case. Here’s why:
Q: How bad could it really be? Well I would say decide for yourself, I found the case guilty during gaming sessions. I usually play Battlefield 4 on my PC on almost a daily basis. I found that with the Window Side Panel on the case I had a max temperature of 93°C which shocked me and made my watercooling useless. I wasn’t even able to touch my case then. But then after investigating, we found that remvoing the side panel dropped my CPU temperature to 55-62°C while playing BF4.
Well I guess that sums up all the cons. Phew! To be honest the case isn’t bad in practice, but Armaggeddon made disappointing choices with this case which could have been better.
