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LifestreamI finally got around to buying a new computer case. After much anguish and deliberation I settled for the Gigabyte 3D Aurora, an aluminium tower model with a modern and balanced cooling solution. Three 120mm fans included but ships without PSU. Mindboggling CPU cooling, average HD cooling.
Perhaps I should offer a few pointers on the case. There are plenty of methodical reviews out there so I’ll just focus on the (possible) pitfalls. Overall, this is an amazing debut by Gigabyte and perhaps THE best case on the tower market today. But still, there are always snags …
- The main hurdle turned out to be the harddrive cage, which as you know is turned 90 degrees. If you use just a few SATA drives you can stop reading now. But for users with many PATA drives there are a number of problems. First, rounded cables don’t work .. at least not well. At least you can’t have all rounded cables or you’ll never be able to close the case. Second, I had no cables that could go from the mainboard controller and connect to both a HD and a 5.25” unit. 45cm cables wont do it. Neither will 60cm. I didn’t have any 90cm cables but I wouldn’t bet my life on it either. I’m thinking of solving this by getting an extra controller card for my 5.25” units as I have a DVD that I can’t connect because I lack controller slots on the mainboard. Other solutions include a SATA-PATA converter or getting really long PATA cables.
- The tool-less design for securing the AGP/PCI cards got hung up on the PCB of an older PCI card. Solution: Use screws instead, or scrape away some of the edge of the PCB.
- 2 external 3.5” bays!? I guess one can install harddrives in them (?) but I stopped using floppy disks many years ago.
