| Article Index |
|---|
| Tagan APLUS El-Diablo Tower Case Review |
| 2 - Design and Features |
| 3 - Design and Features cont. |
| 4 - Conclusion |
| All Pages |
There’s a spot for a 120mm cooling fan at the rear of the case, complete with anti-vibration grommets if you want to add another fan to the system, though I think most people will be fine without one, given the standard cooling already included in this case.
Around the 120mm fan location at the rear there are 4 small cut-out holes which can be punched out to allow for water cooling pipes to come in and out. While this is a welcome inclusion in a case of this size and its considering demographic, they could have done with some more thought. Once you punch out the metal from these holes you’ll be left with little bits of jagged metal, and even if you tidy it up with a file or rotary tool, it’s still just thin bare metal for your plastic pipe work to go through, disaster awaits. Some rubber grommets would have been a good inclusion. It’s almost as though they decided to include these holes with the case AFTER it had already been made.
Moving down to the expansion slots on the rear of the case, we have plastic retaining clips to hold in any and all expansion cards, and sadly there is no secondary (or better) way of securing the cards, such as screwing them in, without removing the plastic clips altogether. I know I wouldn’t want to be a PC builder shipping systems across the country with only plastic clips holding in $1000 video cards, which can be damn heavy. The good news is that the plastic clips do seem rather sturdy, but still the option to also screw the expansion cards in place would be nice.
On the top of the case underneath a small flip-top lid, we find the I/O panel that you would normally expect to be on the front of the case. This panel includes 2 x USB ports, a Firewire port and HD-Audio capable Audio Ports (Headphone + Microphone), so just the standard ports you would expect on any decent case, but where they’re positioned on the case is rather odd – right in the middle of the top panel. When you think about it, most people aren’t going to have this massive case sitting right next to their chair, it’ll most likely be pushed under a desk, or next to the desk away from where they’re sitting. Having the panel in a standard place like on the front panel, or at the front of the top panel would be a much more convenient place to get to, and having it on top also means you can’t ever stack or store anything on top of the case if you want to retain access to these ports.
Finally the door of the case, a rather thick plastic item that is held shut magnetically, which makes it very easy to open when you need to, no annoying clips or latches to deal with. All externally accessible drives bays as well as both the power and reset switches are concealed behind the door, however there is no form of lock whatsoever to keep prying hands from getting in and causing trouble. The door opens up to the left but can only seem to open to a maximum angle of around 90 degrees, and once it’s there it won’t stay there, always trying to shut itself, which got annoying rather quickly (especially when trying to take a photo). There is also no way to remove the door from the case if you wanted to. I really think the whole thing could have been done much better by Tagan.
