| Article Index |
|---|
| Tagan APLUS El-Diablo Tower Case Review |
| 2 - Design and Features |
| 3 - Design and Features cont. |
| 4 - Conclusion |
| All Pages |
Tagan – A company famous for their high power and high quality power supplies are now trying their hand in the PC
Case market, and this latest offering of theirs, the El-Diablo, is certainly an interesting case to say the least.
The CS-EL Diablo BM - as it is fully known - is Tagan’s newest edition to their Aplus line of enthusiast PC cases, and as Tagan are well known for the quality of their ATX power supply units, if they can match that quality and level of features in their cases, we should be in for a treat.
Appearance:
The first thing you notice about the El-Diablo is its sheer size, and I mean this thing is BIG! Standing 52cm tall (53.5cm with feet) and 57cm deep it’s even taller than the Antec P190 we reviewed earlier in the year, and that wasn’t small by any means, so this isn’t going to be for those people wanting a quaint little computer case to sit under their desk, the El Diablo is about being noticed.
The front panel of the El Diablo is matt-black plastic with a polished grey insert down the middle, which houses the A-Plus logo (which acts as a power light). This panel is the main door of the system, which hides the 5.25” drive bays and floppy drive bay.
Sitting just below the drive bays at the base of the front panel is the biggest front intake fan I’ve seen on a computer case, a whopping 250mm!! Sitting behind a wire mesh and plastic shroud that makes it resemble a jet engine’s air intake. Included with this intake fan are 5 LED lights (blue of course) to make it even more visually appealing to people who are into that sort of thing.
Around the sides of the front intake fan and following the sides of the case are flared fairings that add some style to the case but don’t serve much of a practical purpose, other than the eye candy provided by the included semi-circle of blue light.
The main side panel of the El-Diablo is mostly made up of black metal mesh, and hanging onto this mesh is a massive 320mm cooling fan which also includes blue LED lights just like the front intake fan. This huge side fan blows inwards to keep the whole motherboard area nice and cool. You would want to hope this fan lasts a lifetime though, because lord knows where you would find a replacement if it died. The other side panel is just plain basic steel with the same matt-black paint coating at the top of the case.
Design and Features:
With the main side panel off we can finally have a look at the insides of the case. The main motherboard area is big enough to accommodate a full-size motherboard including E-ATX standard of 12” x 13” size. So server boards shouldn’t be a problem in this case, and it will definitely be able to take any standard motherboard on the market.
The construction of the Tagan El-Diablo is normal steel, so it’s not exactly a light-weight case by any means, but with a case of this size, even if it was made of aluminium, once you load it up inside with all your goodies, it’s still going to be damn heavy. So with the El-Diablo the decision to stick with standard steel construction helps to keep the price low. Inside the case all the edges are rounded off to avoid any possible cuts when working on the guts of your system, you really wouldn’t expect anything less.
There are 5 x 5.25” drive bays inside the El-Diablo, and the drives are all installed with drive slides that just clip into the side of the drives, however they can also be properly secured to the drive with a couple of screws going through the slides to stop them coming loose when the case is transported.
Just below the 5.25” bays is a single floppy drive bay for the three of you out there that still use a floppy drive, and for everyone else you can use this space for another hard drive. However no drive slides can be used for this spot, so standard screws will be needed.
We move down to the bottom of the case where we find the main bay for the hard disk drives. This bay can take a total of 6 drives which are mounted in from the side of the case, and are installed with plastic drive slides. These plastic drive slides do not need to be screwed into the drive, but it would be a good idea to do so if you plan on moving the case around. Tagan have allowed a spot on the drive slides for them to be fixed to the drive with a screw, but if you have a look at the picture of the slide below, I don’t know any type of screw that would be able to fit in there without severe modifications (read: cutting and hacking) to the plastic slide itself. Someone wasn’t thinking too hard when they designed this bit.
The drives are nicely positioned behind the huge 250mm front intake cooling fan, so they’ll be kept nice and cool without a worry. This front cooling fan, as well as the side panel 320mm fan can have their speed manually controlled by a dial on each side of the case, or turned off altogether with switches located on either side of the front fan. These are great ideas, but the wiring for them inside the case is a nightmare, there are 4 separate Molex connectors (without pass-through connectors) being used from the power supply just for these fans and the lights on the side of case, which is ridiculous.
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.
Conclusion:
This is the first of Tagan’s range of cases I’ve been able to review, and while in the past I have been very impressed with Tagan’s products such as their power supply units, which were always well constructed, quiet and powerful with a host of useful features, I can’t say I’m too impressed with this case.
For a Super-Mid tower case it is nice and big, so fitting lots of components inside will be a breeze, the standard cooling setup is excellent if not a little over the top and it is rather well constructed in terms of its build quality, but there are just a few too many things that could have been done a whole lot better. Things such as the door, the internal cabling and power for the fans, the drive slides, holes for the water cooling just to name a few.
The Tagan APlus CS El-Diablo sells online for just over AU$180, which doesn’t include a power supply, but you do get a LOT of case for your money, and for people after a case that looks different and will get attention, has lots of standard lighting and lots of space, this would be a great case for them, and if Tagan can make some revisions on this case and fix a few of its downfalls, it could be a great case for everyone else too.
Pros:
- Lots of space inside
- Lots of drives bays
- Huge cooling fans included as standard
- Good (Interesting) looks
- Cool lighting as standard
Cons:
- Internal cabling for the cooling fans is confusing and requires 4 Molex connectors
- Door won’t open more than 90 degrees, stay open or come off.
- Very few Anti-Noise measures
- Inconvenient location of I/O Ports on top of case
OzHardware Rating - 6.5/10
This Product can be purchased online at www.techbuy.com.au (Direct Link)
