These are some images that did not make their way into the review. Some are redundant, some are silly. Any or none may shed further light on the ATC-600.
Image 12
Image 15
Image 22
Image 23
Image 25
Image 28
Image 29
Image 31
Image 32
Image 34
Image 35
Image 36
Image 38
Image 40
Image 44
Image 45
Image 46
Image 51
Image 54
Image 56
|
Hardware Installation
One's case can look as slick as tomorrow's fashion, but if it cannot do what it needs to do, i.e., hold a computer together, it fails utterly in its purpose.
The ATC-600 series has, in this reviewer's opinion, some serious interior design flaws. Beyond needing a Micro-ATX motherboard, many items that should have been addressed have not:
1. No Removable Motherboard Tray
2. Drive Mounting Cages
3. Power Supply Mount
4. Air-Flow Issues
The lack of a removable motherboard tray becomes taxing as the installation continues. Dealing with the Micro-ATX form factor becomes tedious when one is forced to work in steadily cramping quarters.
The drive-mounts are a simple affair: an inverted aluminum U. Two pair will hold two 3.5" internal drives and two 5.25" external drives. The hard drives attach to the top of the drive-mount, the 5.25" drives mount below them. It is worth pointing out that there is physical room for another drive beneath the optical drive, but the case design requires that wiring (the USB/FW on the right, and the power/reset/etc. cables on the left) run beneath the drive-mounts.
At this point, I found that it was IMPERATIVE that the arrangement of drives be made correctly the first time. Only one of the drive-mounts will actually come free of the case; the other is attached permanently. In addition, once you have your drives installed, you CANNOT remove a drive without first removing the drive-mount. The hard/optical drives are screwed in from the sides, and once installed, your screwdriver cannot reach most of the screws.
Another caveat of this arrangement is (assuming you fill all available spaces) you will need custom IDE cables to reach from drive to drive and to the motherboard. Following the guidelines for maximizing the bandwidth available, hard drives should be kept on a different channel than the optical drives. This rules out using one standard cable to attach a hard drive and an optical drive for one drive-mount, and another for the other. The distance from opti-to-opti connectors requires a length of roughly 6-7", the distance from hard drive to hard drive required a similar length of slack between connectors.
If you plan on using just one set of hard drives and optical drives, you should have no problem cabling.
The power supply attaches to the case through the standard four screw points. Unlike in other Cooler Master cases (such as the 200 or 210 series'), there is no mount-plate for the power supply.
If you have a higher-end power supply, such as an Enermax or Antec, with dual fans (exhaust out the back, intake from below) its efficacy will be limited by its situation in the ATC-600 case. Instead of in-taking heated air from the CPU HSF, it will be pointed straight up. This will reduce the amount of air the case will be able to exchange. It should be noted that there is some clearance in the case from the power supply's top to the top of the case (I apologize for the lack of an illustrative picture).
In addition, depending on your motherboard/CPU/HSF solution, there are space considerations. The power supply butts up against the top of your motherboard. A gut instinct tells me that a hot CPU/HSF next to a power supply (without the benefit of moving air) may compromise some CPUs. One can see from my example that a HSF can sit uncomfortably close to the power supply. This is not Cooler Master's fault, but rather up to the person building out the computer. The motherboard PCB design becomes that much more critical to build a stable computer.
The heat/airflow issue is exacerbated by the placement of the three pre-installed fans. All three are decent 60mm fans. The side air-intake fans are not placed in an optimal spot. Roughly 50-60% of the cool air coming in is diverted by the perpendiculars of the optical and/or hard drives. The design may be a conscious choice, forcing some air to run over the drives, doubling as drive coolers. However, in my spot checks very little air was actually properly diverted, and the drives created pools of stagnant air in the front corners (not so important) and over the motherboard (very important). In addition, the case cover will restrict much of the air-flow over the hard drives (it seems like less than a millimeter's clearance from the top of the hard drive to the case cover), negating much of the cooling effect. Placing both intake fans 1/2" more towards the rear of the case would increase overall airflow within the case, but as the fan grates are die-cut into the case itself, this would be a re-design.
The rear exhaust fan does its job. However, it may be prudent to put a higher CFM replacement there as air flow did not seem balanced (purely a subjective observation. I could not measure air pressure).
|
