PC Power and Cooling Solid Steel Full Tower Case

Company: PC Power and Cooling
Product: Solid-Steel Tower
Street Price: $224.10 USD (w/o PSU)
Date Reviewed: November 6, 2002
Reviewed By: Joey C. aka Chong345
Rating: (8/10)

Introduction (Cont):

The other items that came with the case were all the mounting hardware, such as drive rails, screws, standoffs, rubber feet, etc. There was only one set of 3 ½ mounting hardware since all the drive bays are 5 and ¼. This was a little disappointing as I would have like to have more since I have 2 hard drives and a floppy. Other than that everything looked really nice and there were no other thing that I could see that might be a problem.

Installation:

The first thing that I needed to do was install the standoffs so that I could put the motherboard in the case. This was fairly easy but you have to figure out which holes to use since they are not marked. After that the motherboard install was very easy. The board fit right in and their was a lot of room between it and the front of the case. In my Cheiftec case I had issues where the front was too close to the board so that the cables from my HDD's would sit over the board. In this case there was plenty of room and clearance. Next I installed all of my drives. The only thing that I have to say with this is that you have to take off the front bezel every time you install a new drive. This could get agitating for someone who constantly removes drives or adds drives. The brackets were easy to place on the drives and then the drive slides right it. It was nice and flush with the rest of the case. Not having the extra mounting brackets to install all of my hard drives or my floppy I had to use my DigiDoc as a hard drive cooler. I didn't install the floppy either but the brackets can be found easily at a local computer store.

I put in the power supply and wired everything up. I must say though that you might need some longer IDE cables to reach from the top of the case to your motherboard especially if your IDE connectors on the motherboard are close to the bottom of the case. I used 24 inch cables and had no problems with the length. I don't know how well 18 inch would work. I then installed the power supply and put all my PCI and AGP cards in as well. This was all very standard just like any other case. Now that everything was properly installed, I put the front bezel back on and sealed the case up. This install took no time really and was pretty simple. Due to the construction of the case everything was in and very secure. At this point the case was very heavy. I mean it was heavy even before there was anything in it but what was I supposed to expect, the whole thing is steel.

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