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With
all the cool features included in the 5605 I was very excited to move my PC over
from my boring old generic case and finally enter the ranks of the fashionable
PC case connoisseurs. Installation was quick, easy, and apart from the aforementioned
sliced finger, painless. I appreciated the extra breathing room for my two hard
drives, and I had no problems sliding in my CD and DVD drives. 
An early "build" with the door down (lacking
DVD).
Ready
to check out the features, I closed the case and powered up, marveling at the
healthy blue glow of the LED. Of course I immediately had to try out the mechanical
door, and I was surprised to see how smoothly and quietly it moved up and down.
I was beginning to think how I could get used to this. And then, you guessed it,
the door froze. Despite several more button pushes, it refused to budge.
To make matters worse, the door was stuck about three-quarters of the way down,
enough to obscure the LED, the power and reset buttons, and the bottom drive bays
all at once. Luckily there is an extra power button set at the very bottom of
the case, so I was still able to power on/off, but the stuck door managed to negate
nearly all of the 5605's charm. Trying to physically move the door proved fruitless,
as the motor that moves it that is set inside the front bezel is actually quite
strong and too much force would simply break rather than encourage it to start
working again. The motor was so insistent, in fact, that even though the door
was stuck (for reasons unknown) the motor would occasionally try to move the door
out of the way, an impossible task resulting in a high-pitched whining noise occasionally
emitting from my PC. No fun. Lucky
for me, Maxtop was quite accommodating in replacing the front bezel, and after
an extra week or two of waiting I finally was able to replace the part myself
with the piece they sent me, and thus far this second door has been working like
a charm (just my luck to get the one broken piece). In Maxtop's defense, they
assure me that my case is the only known instance where they've actually had to
replace a broken bezel, so theoretically this should not be a threat to any potential
purchase. If you're someone who has a lot of bad luck with mechanics though, or
if you're planning on putting a lot of extra wear and tear on your case, I would
recommend a more utilitarian, non-mechanical case. However, that's not why you'd
want to buy a case like the 5605 in the first place, so it really isn't hurting
the case's case, as it were. With
the broken door fixed and my PC up and running, you'd hope everything would be
all set. But unfortunately there is yet another problem with the 5605's design,
that most crucial aspect of all cases: airflow. Although the case looks
great- the silver and blue panels, the LED, the sliding door, etc.- these looks
came at a price. To begin with, the side and front panels have NO air-intake holes
at all. While there is a mounting for an intake fan in the front of the case,
there's simply no way for any air to get in, rendering any front fan, as well
as the pair of encased outtake fans in the rear, useless. Making this problem
even worse is the chaos of cables and wires that is jumbled in the case, impeding
airflow and hampering case setup (not to mention appeal, for those with the 5605-W
windowed version). In all fairness, a lot of cable-stealthing work (repeat: a
lot) could clean up the jumble a fair amount, but it is certainly worth noting
the amount of wires bundled in the 5605, which exceeds the average product. 
Furthermore,
one of these many cables carries the power for the front bezel's LED and mechanized
door. Skyhawk has designed the case so that the power cable runs to the motherboard's
power jack, and then the cable from the power supply runs into the back of the
case power cable. In theory this system works fine, but in practice, particularly
in practice in my MSI KT4V, this was a very bad idea, as the power input on the
motherboard lies right between the CPU and the case fan. This meant not only that
this power coupling was perfectly centered in the hottest part of my case, but
also that it greatly impeded the airflow off of my CPU cooler. 
In
the above pictures you can see the cable from the power supply running to the
cable from the case, which is then connected to the motherboard. Keep in mind
that that Thermaltake Volcano11 is a pretty tall cooler, and yes, the power coupling
is actually sticking out and over the CPU fan that far. Unfortunately,
all of these factors combine to make the 5605 a very hot case! In a room with
an ambient temperature of about 25 degrees Celsius, the temp inside the case while
my PC was idle averaged about 38 degrees, and the temperature under heavy load
climbed all the way up to 46! Now, admittedly my Athlon XP 2100+ runs very hot,
and while some folks would start freaking out even if their CPU itself
was reaching these temps, I am much more used to a hot PC. However, even I must
agree that these temperatures were simply too high, especially considering that
my old generic, $30 case averages around 31 degrees while idle and only 35 when
I'm really cooking. These factors greatly detract from the appeal of this $80
beauty. | |
