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Sunbeamtech Tuniq 2 Case Review
Layout, Design and other features ...
Now let's get to the optical and practical criteria of the Sunbeamtech
Tuniq2 case.
The black metall case is very well finished and offers one 3.5 inch floppy
drive expansion bay and
eight 5.25 inch drive bays for the DVD-ROM, DVD writer, HDD mounting frames,
etc behind the front bezel.
The front bezel looks very solid and the aluminium finish is really
nice, whereby the middle of the front bezel
is a perforated metal plate to ensure a good airflow.
PC freaks will recognize within seconds that the back of this case is
rather unusal, because the power supply unit
is BTX like at the bottom of the case and not at the top - anyway, this
is no BTX case.
So the complete arrangement of the components is changed and the motherboard
is installed upside down.
This is the reason why you've to open the "wrong" side panel
to get access to the installed hardware.
Surely it's questionable whether this arrangement is favourable, since
e.g. the power supply fan cannot blow
hot air out of the upper case range, however the access to the expansion
cards is much easier.
Thanks to the very good air flow it's not problematic to have such a
component arrangement.
Here you see the removable side panel with some large fan grills in the
right of the picture.
In the left part of the picture, close to the front bazel one recognizes
the well placed audio and USB connections.
The other side panel is non-detachable and offers no way to take a motherboard
tray out of the case,
but due to the large work space inside of the case it's nearly unnecessary
to have a removable mainboard tray.
And if you ask yourself, how to mount the screws for the 5.25 inch drive
bays on this side, Sunbeamtech has
a solution for us.
The small black plastic caps close to the front have drill holes into
the case, whereby one can mount the screws
of each drive - nice idea and easy to handle.
Now here is the bottom face of the case, where you see one big drawback
of the Tuniq 2 Mid Tower.
Because in the middle underside are the screw holes for the 4 hard disk
drives, so you have to lay the case
on one side to mount the screws and additionally the hot hard disks are
nearly on the floor.
It's not really problematic on a parquet floor, but on carpeted floor
this might be unfavorable during a longer period.
A removable disk cage would have been clearly expedient.
In order to prevent these problems, I would suggest to install all hard
disk drives with 5.25 inch frames into
the front 5.25" bays.
Here's again a positive highlight of the Tuniq2 Mid Tower.
Who was always annoyed at a badly accessible power button or activity
LEDs, will love these control elements
on the top of the case.
The Reset button is still behind the front bazel, but who needs to Reset
a well running PC every day ? ;-)
Comfortable is also the mechanism to hold the side panel securely.
It remains to be seen how long these small plastic clamps holds in the
normal course of life, but the good case finish
should promise a long life span.
Let's have a look inside of the Tuniq 2 chassis.
All the edges are well folded and rounded.
Before the installation of the motherboard one should take out the "Grand
Fan Duct" (black plastic tube in the
middle of the case) with both mounted 120 mm fans, which is no problem
at all, because it's only necessary to
remove one screw and two small clamps to take it off.
The fan duct helps to get fresh air for the CPU heatsink and the video
card(s), so that the hardware with the
most generation of heat stay very well cooled.
In the bottom of the case you see once again the unfavourable placed hard
drive cage, where the HDDs have
to be mounted upright.
The rest of the Tuniq 2 case is well thought out and offers very much
space for the installation of all components.
Here's a picture of the 120mm fan which is already mounted in the lower
front of the case.
HDDs would be well cooled and best placed at this position.
The installation of PCI, AGP and PCIe cards is thanks to the screw-free
locking mechanism very easy.
Simply lift up the small clamp as shown in the picture and take the
card out - very fast and easy mechanism.
Very nice are these small retainers, which holds the IO cables perfectly.
Here's a picture of the well labeled front IO cables and the USB as
well as audio plugs build in one block.
So it's not necessary to put as often usually each pin to the mainboard.
Nevertheless I recommend to compare the pin allocation of the IEEE 1394,
the USB and the audio plug
with the mainboard manual before the first installation.
All pictures and article are subject to the copyright 2006 of www.ocinside.de
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