Date: May 26th, 2008
Article by: Jackie Mueller (Hardware Reviewer)
Edited by: Nathan Glentworth (Owner / Head Editor)
Product was submitted by: Glacialtech
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PRODUCT PICTORIAL AND WALKTHROUGH
A 60mm blue LED fan is mounted to each side of the case. These two small fans are the only cooling provided, so it will be interesting to see how they perform as well as the noise level they create.
PRODUCT INSTALLATION AND TESTING
The components I'll be installing in the A380 consist of:
- Biostar K8M800-M7A Micro-ATX motherboard
- AMD Sempron 3100+ CPU w/Thermaltake Venus 7 cooler
- 2 x 512 MB Patriot PC3200 RAM
- Onboard video
- Samsung 120GB HDD
- NEC DVD-RW
PSU connectors include a 20-pin main power for the motherboard, a 4-pin +12v connector, four Molex plugs, one floppy connector and a fan header – no SATA power. This is easily resolved by using a Molex to SATA adapter, or by using a SATA drive that can take a Molex power plug.
After installing the motherboard I ran into a problem. The main power cable was too short to reach the plug on the board, so I had to use an extender. Also, expansion cards require the use of a right angle riser card (not included) in order to fit the horizontal slot openings of the case. There was no documentation that stated this, nor could I find anything on Glacialtech's website that mentioned it.
Another issue I ran into was the absence of labels on the front panel connectors except for the HDD LED. Since there's only a few of them they were not too difficult to trace back to the parts they control, although it is strange to find a case that didn't label these connectors.
The optical drive cage is removed via a single thumbscrew and the drive installed, then put back into the case. This was very simple and took hardly any time at all.
