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A
Closer Look:::...
Out
of its plain, bown carton I was actually quite taken aback.
The Elite is a very stylish case indeed.
Ignoring
for a while that the side panel feels like your typically
flimsy 0.8mm (ish) steel, the grey and cream colour scheme,
also available in cream and blue, works really well, as
so the sweeping lines and that "power bulge" at
the bottom of the front panel. With so many budget cases
made after a theme, I've seem them made to look like cars,
mobile phones and Dalmations (no, that wasn't a typo), the
Elite is proof that cheap needn't mean tacky.
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Mercury
Elite Case
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The
front panel is dominated by the four external bays, below
which sits a stealthed floppy drive. The only other obvious
fature is the small door at the bottom behind which are
your front mounted connectors.
So
where's the power switch, reset switch and power/HDD LEDs?
Look right at the top and you can probably just about make
them out.
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Front
View
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Before we look at the top of the case though let's venture
round the back. I'm not enthralled by that fan vent and,
like I so often suggest, think Mercury would have been better
to cut a large hole and use a chrome fan guard over it instead.
It certainly wouldn't have been quite so restrictive to
the flow of air, not that this is the worst we've seen by
any stretch of the imagination.
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Rear
View
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Oh
look, the side panels are held in place using thumb screws.
Both side panels in fact use thumb screws, a rarity on much
more expensive cases, though I don't know why, they're not
exactly expensive.
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Rear
Vent
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Now let's have a look at that top again. The large, lozenge
shaped silver button is the power button while the thinner
bar is the reset button. Between the two are the power and
hard disk activity LEDs. Now, cool though this arrangement
looks, and in my opinion it does look cool, it will stop
you standing an external water cooling unit like Corsair's
HydroCool on top, but by way of compensation you can keep
your boiled sweets in that recess beneath the handle :)
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Case
Top
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Speaking
of that recess, it does seem kind of wasted somehow. I'm
not sure what I'd do with it, maybe a blow-hole or a clear
perspex panel peering inside or something, it just looks
like it's dying to be used for something.
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Case
Top
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Herre's
a closer look at the bpwer and reset buttons. The LEDs are
behind the oval, tinted plastic panel positioned below their
respective icons. I supplied the dust by the way.
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Power/Reset
Buttons
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I
quite like the idea of hiding the front of the floppy drive
behind a panel in this way provided the cut-out is big enough
to both insert and remove your disks. Most people use floppies
only rarely, if at all these days so it's less of an issue
than it was, but the Elite had enough of an opening to make
life reasonably easy.
Where
you'll struggle is if you want to install something like
a memory card reader or some other peripheral designed for
an external 3.5" bay as there isn't one. You'll just
have to shop for a 5.25" version instead.
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Lower
Front Fascia
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And
behind the little door are a pair of USB ports, and headphone
kack and a microphone jack, both of which need labeling
or colour-coding. There are no Firewire ports but I suppose
that's excusable at this price point.
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Front
Ports
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In
addition to the usual screws and motherboard stand-offs
you naturally get a power feed cable for the PSU.
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Also
Supplied
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So far so good. While you can sense this isn't an expensive
case, there are certainly no real clues other than the feel
of the thin-gauge side panels that whet you're looking at
something that sells so cheaply. In fact the only thing
I found outside worth moaning about were the feet..........
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