Legit Case Reviews

ThermalRock Circle Full Tower Case

Manufacturer: ThermalRock
Product: Circle Full Tower Case
Date: Tue, May 10, 2005 - 12:00 AM
Written By: Yves Toleno -
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Installation

Installation:

I had two major problems with my installation. The first was the power supply; because the case is so large and tall the ATX power cable was not quite long enough. I check with another power supply and it was fine showing that I was correct in stating that SkyHawk needed to lengthen the ATX power cables. Thankfully they have already passed that onto the engineers. But the lesson stands this case is large make sure that your power supply has long cables otherwise you could find your self stretching, fudging, and manipulating to get it in there. The second issue I encountered also had less to do with the case than my motherboard. The DFI Lanparty UT Ultra-D has a audio riser card. This card impacted with the rear exhaust fan and its housing.

In this picture you can clearly see where the audio card hits the fan. If you look at the profile shot there is almost 1cm of distance between the backplane and the card.

To fix this situation I removed the fan housing and attached the fan directly to the back of the case. This gave me the room I needed to fully seat the motherboard. The audio riser card still makes contact and is ever so slightly angled by the fan, but I was able to fit the motherboard in the case and that’s what is important. Just keep in mind that if your motherboard has any vertical cards in the vicinity of the rear exhaust fan then there may be clearance issues with this case.

I had to drill out the mounting holes on the back in order to fit fan screws here is the before and after picture. This is what allowed me to mount the fan directly to the case.

Finaly we have the system up and running. I connected it to my TV just to get a feel for what a home theater PC would be like and I have to say I want one. My next build will probably be for the living room. Once the computer was powered up the CD-ROM’s on the front of the case were illuminated by LED’s in the door creating a nice blue glow. If you’re a 24/7 computer user then you will not want to connect the front LED’s as the generate quite a bit of light. One of the best things about this case is its thermal properties. The two 120mm fans create lots of air flow over the CPU and keep it much cooler than some other cases. My Lian Li PC52 had a load temperature around 55c while the ThermalRock Circle case kept it around 50c.

Next Page - Final Thoughts


Review Index
Page 1 - Specifications and Features
Page 2 - Packaging
Page 3 - The Looks
Page 4 - Installation
Page 5 - Final Thoughts