| Article Index |
|---|
| Antec VSK-2000 New Solution Series Case Review |
| The Exterior |
| The Interior |
| Installation |
| The Tests |
| Conclusion |
| All Pages |
Quote: "when I first looked upon the VSK2000 box, I pretty well walked past it in the warehouse. The VSK-2000 comes in a box that appears to be a dull, plain and ordinary. However, there is a reason, and it’s because we’re not looking at the latest, fancy and high end case, we’re looking at a simple, cost-effective enclosure from Antec. So if you’re looking for a value case, then this review is for you."
Here is where we review the Antec VSK-2000, you have two options: you may either download the review in a PDF format for easy viewing or scroll through our webpages for quicker access. Click the link below for the PDF or simply keep scrolling through the page to read the review.
Article PDF: VSK-2000 Review
The Antec VSK-2000 New Solution Series Black Midi-Tower Case
Reviewed by Richard Mead
The Box
Opening a box is almost like being an excited child around the Christmas tree, with all the bright colours and the thought of something new and cool. But when I first looked upon the VSK-2000 box, I pretty well walked past it in the warehouse. The VSK-2000 comes in a box that appears to be a dull, plain and ordinary. However, there is a reason, and it’s because we’re not looking at the latest, fancy and high end case, we’re looking at a simple, cost-effective enclosure from Antec. So if you’re looking for a value case, then this review is for you.
Although the box was nothing special, It is an industry standard to ensure your case gets to you scratch free and as you can see Antec have provided adequate damage protection to the case, and I must admit, I was still excited to open the box. The case’s measurements were 452 x 198 x 476 mm, while box measurements were approximately 520 x 264 x 555mm.
The Exterior
The Front
When I first glimpsed upon the front of the VSK-2000, the first and most obvious thing to my eye was the bulge, sitting right at the top and in your face. It comes out by about 1 centimetre and is strictly flat, deviating from the lower pattern. It seems very out of place and a very strange shape for a case front.
The lower, more impressive perforated front bezel gives the case what it needs, a nicely textured look and metallic feel. Behind that is a plastic frame creating some sort of pattern that looks somewhat like a sergeant’s insignia from the US Army, perhaps the designer was trying to make this look superior among other cases by giving it a rank, but most likely, it was just a pattern they used to make it look a little fancy.
The bulge in this case is able to mount three 5.25” drives and at the bottom of these drives lies a small inward “doggy flap” to mount a single 3.5” drive. My first impression was that this was the flap to some sort of trash disposal lid for unneeded floppy drives. But it does look neat and is also useful as a removable bay for perhaps a portable 3.5” HDD.
The Perforated Bezel area is nicely trimmed and is the only metal component on the front of the case, the rest being plastic. It is this part I enjoyed examining and it’s here where air flow enters and is filtered for the case.
At the top of the bulge is a small but neat and tidy input/output panel. From left to right you have: the Reset, Green & Red LED, 2 x USB2.0 Ports, In & Out Audio (AC'97 and HDA compatible) and lastly the Power Switch. As you can also see, there is nothing special on the top of the case, which is good as it’s an extra place to put your books.
Here you can see the back of the front panel where there is the washable air filter mesh. It looks and feels somewhat like a sponge with really big holes, held down by a centre screw and parts of the metal perforated front. It’s easy to remove, but a little hard to put back in.
The Back
The back of the case is standard, you should notice the top mounted PSU missing which leaves a good open path for you to find what you feel is the right PSU. The already supplied 120mm Tri-cool fan is centred above the motherboard drawing airflow above the whole board and out then end of the case. Below lies 7 slots for optional motherboard expansions.
The Side
The sides are very ordinary and nothing special, you will notice the front bulge a bit more from side view. The left side panel has a 2 window grill as air intake points positioned optimally about the CPU area, this is part of the case’s TAC2.0 airflow requirements . The top window measuring 50mm by 105mm and the second 100mm by 105mm. Unfortunately there are no screw mounts to put an extra fan on the grills, it relies on the 120mm Tri-cool and CPU’s heat sink to get air in, but I suppose it could be modified to hold a fan to draw more air in.
The Bottom
Nothing spectacular here, just some plastic feet to keep the VSK-2000 standing. You will notice the front points somewhat like an arrow, but I don’t think it’d get much in aerodynamics being shot or thrown though the air.
The Interior
The Opening
The side panels of the case are held on with regular thumb screws, all comes off nice and easily without a screw driver. Inside is a sheet of anti-corrosion paper and a basic case overview from Antec with 2 cable ties and a bag of screws for mounting your drives.
In the efforts of saving paper, Antec suggested to visit their website for the proper manual.
Click here for the VSK-2000 Manual
If you look carefully enough, you should notice in their manual they are trying to install a beige drive when the case which is obviously black. Worth a laugh.
The Chassis is made from 0.6mm SECC (Steel Electro Galvanised, Cold Rolled Coil) , so it is thinner than most other Antec cases which are usually 0.8mm, but it is still quite strong and slightly lighter
Although slightly smaller inside than most other cases, it still holds enough room to mount a standard full sized ATX motherboard, 7 expansions and 10 drives. You can see 6 elevation screws already installed. More are provided in the goodies bag.
The PSU Bay seems small, it’s able to hold PSUs with the dimensions 450mm (H) 200mm (W) x 470mm (D).
Atop inside are the three 5.25” bays. All drives mounted inside that case are all manual screw driver work, there’s not easy lock in brackets. Although it takes more time and effort, it can be a little more fun during the building process. It’s almost similar to whether or not you drive and automatic or manual car.
Below is the single bay for the floppy disk drive followed by the six 3.5” drive bays for hard drives. At the front of the hard drive bays is a plastic grill which can be removed to mount an extra two 92mm fans at the front of the case and improve airflow, However I’ll show later it is actually large enough to accommodate 120mm fans.
Antec supply one of their own 120mm Tri-cool fan is ready to plug in. The fan has a 3 setting speed controller for 1200, 1600 and 2000rpms. Because its the only fan onboard, the higher rpm maybe what’s needed, but we’ll soon find out. Above it all lies the front panel I/O cables, neatly bundled and secured.
Installation
Equipment
I wanted to test this thing out with the latest and greatest gear, but its a budget case and hence I was limited to budget hardware. Still I managed to get this gear into it:
- ASUS P5N-T Deluxe Motherboard
- Intel Celeron 2.2GHz
- Transcend 4GB DDR2 RAM
- Seagate 500GB HDD
- Sapphire Radeon HD4350
- Samsung SH-S223F DVD Burner
- ThermalTake 430W PSU
- Optional: 2 x XigmaTek 120mm fans
As I mentioned before, its all about manually doing things the good old way, no special slots for drives, but it doesn’t take long to get screws in and you feel like you are saving money by removing the luxury of premade slots.
Cabling
It does get very cramped with cables here and there, but I did manage to get them neatly out of the way after about 30minutes of fiddling.
However, the Audio cable from the front I/O Panel was one of the last cables I was connecting and unfortunately it wasn’t long enough. All other cables from the panel had fit with a small amount of room to spare, but this one Audio cable had to cross the motherboard diagonally and still did not reach. I was told Gigabyte motherboard designs would be better suited for this case and ASUS not so good, but sadly it would only take another 2centimetres and I could have connected the ASUS board in.
The motherboard was a full sized ATX and fit perfectly as well as the PSU, GPU, HDD and DVD Drive, basically everything seemed fine to fit in this case. When in discussion however, I was informed it has a problem with Micro ATX, so I decided to investigate.
MicroATX
As you can see, when I put a Micro ATX board in the case, it fits, but there’s no support for the outer edges of the board, no screw holes at all. A motherboard with no expansion cards would survive, but adding GPU and other cards may put weight and stress on the Micro ATX.
The Tests
The Airflow Test
The VSK-2000 is a TAC2.0 advanced chassis air guide which you can read about here. We’re putting on our visual air flow test of the case to see air movement using a special smoke, there are more technical and precise ways, but I thought this would be more interesting because smoke was involved.
I’ve done this for both front and side of the case air inlets as well as what would be different if the front two optional fans were installed. These fans were 1500rpm, similar to the Tri-cool at medium setting. We also rigged some plexiglass from a difference case to watch air flow from front to back of the case (I realise this removed the use of the side inlet but at least we had a greater visual). Watch the video here (will be embedded shortly)
Air flow in this case without the additional fans was great already. The one Tri-cool fan pulled air from both side and front over HDDs and motherboard. If anything, airflow was not as high where the 5.25” drive bays were.
Installing the additional fans (which we found were 120mm not 90mm as Antec listed) added a huge pull of air through the front of the case and definitely contributed to give a fresh breathe to this case. It was hard to see exhaust from the rear because the fans chewed the smoke to bits. Its my guess that if all HDD bays were installed, then the additional fans would be needed. TAC2.0 has to be earned and this case does earn it.
The Temperature Test
This is not my favourite test for a case because of the huge variety of heat sinks and modified cooling systems designed to keep temperature low which will vary with your own system and workload, but regardless these are the temperature results I recorded using a laser pointed temperature reader and BIOS. All temperatures initially started at 21.5 ?C
|
Device |
Idle |
Processing |
| CPU | 37-38?C | 40-41?C |
| Graphics | 33-34?C | 33-36?C |
| Motherboard | 30-33?C | 30-33?C |
| HDD | 24-26?C | 25-26?C |
The Sound Test
Again test will depend upon your hardware because some devices are noisier than others, but I think I can safely say this case is not the best for being quiet. I had it sitting top the test and as it was loading an operating system, it rattled the table slightly.
When doing nothing the case recorded as low as 40 Decibels but averaged around 44 which is equivalent to a quiet conversation. As it was installing the OS it managed to reach as high as 52 Decibels and began the rattle. The sound was almost similar to a refrigerator.
Since it has virtually no sound proofing, It’s best to keep this thing on the ground, under the desk to minimise noise.
Performance Summary
|
Factor |
Comments |
Score |
|
The Look |
The lower half and sides all look decent and modest, not over the top, but that bulge is very out of place. |
3/5 |
|
Capacity |
The case has 10 drive bays which should be plenty for most people. |
4/5 |
|
Material & Structure |
Although thinner, still a strong SECC framework |
4/5 |
|
Installation Difficulty |
Everything done the old fashion way, Audio cable too short and miniATX installation also lets it down. |
2/5 |
|
Air Flow Test |
Tac2.0 Superb, the airflow in this case is great! |
4.5/5 |
|
Temperature Test |
All system devices were kept in a good temperature range . |
3.5/5 |
|
Sound Test |
Theres no proper sound proofing and it was noisy during processing, but if you put it on the floor, it’ll be fine. |
2/5 |
|
Bonus Marks |
1 x Antec Tri-cool Fan |
2/5 |
|
Total |
|
25/40 |
Although I only gave this case a 25/40, it’s still a decent mark. You should notice its Recommended Retail Price is $88 and the airflow it offers is quite outstanding. When I looked at cases in the same price range and cheaper, there weren’t many others that offered similar airflow, there was the Antec Two-Hundred Gaming case, but it has a lower mounted PSU which might disrupt airflow and also the VSK-2000 despite the bulge just looked more professional.
Overall my opinion stands that the VSK-2000 did quite well in performance and the price they’re asking for this level of performance makes it very cheap.
Why Should I get this case?
These are a few reasons why the VSK-2000 might apply to you:
- I’m on a budget.
- I’m not worried about installing with screws.
- I need a reliable design.
- I need at least 6 HDD bays.
- I want a case with good airflow.
- I need a light case to carry around.
- I need a case immediately because my old case has turned into an oven and is slow roasting my hardware for Christmas dinner.
Why I Shouldn’t get this case?
These are some reasons why the VSK-2000 might not be for you:
- I’m willing to spend more.
- I want the installation to go smoothly and have no faults like short cables.
- I don’t like that bulge / design, I.E. I want a more fancy case.
- I need more fans.
- I need something that will block sounds.
- I need more space or bigger case.
- Although my old case is slow roasting my hardware, I do enjoy the smoky smell it fills my house with.
Conclusion
Overall I enjoyed reviewing this case. We did get off to a bad start because I couldn’t spot the box and it had a strange face, but I did get used to it and I could imagine it used as my own case. It’s simple and modest, gives some good features all for quite a low price. Even though it requires more effort to get hardware in there you do feel a greater sense of achievement by manually installing the gear. It’s great to watch and feel the airflow move through this case, it does seem like it can generate a significant impact on cooling.
There are however its downside which are pretty strong but it depends whether or not you see it as a big problem. You’ll need to check the motherboard before installing to make sure all front panel cables will reach their ports and you will need to spend the money you saved on getting a PSU. It doesn’t hold back much sound so prepare to hear some buzzing from time and again.
Thank you for reading this review.
Helpful Links
The "Bulge" didn’t bother me, and I thought it lent an edgy look, along with the Sarge pattern. The front 3.5" trap door is awkward, and I can’t think of a real use for it, but fun to flip when you're bored - lol. Did you note the front indent that looks like an "Eject" button to the left of the trap door? Has no use, just a 'shape' on the face... could confuse lame End Users (aka customers).
I miss the silicon drive mount option to reduce vibration, but it's a budget case.
I used a full size Gigabyte ATX MoBo so the standoffs were not an issue. I had an extra Antec 500W PSU lying around from another build, and used it here... fit perfectly.
Finally, my only let down, was th...