Intro

What do you get when you take a standard computer case, slap on a nice paint job, style the front a bit, and include a PSU? You get the XG Sidewinder case. Enthusiast computer users are a minority in the vast world of computer users that care enough about the appearance of their computer case to take the time to cut, grind, paint, glue, and do all manner of other things to make them look cool. While there are average computer users that would like a nice looking case, they aren’t about to go out and take their dremmel to their computer to make it look nice. On the same note, there are a number of enthusiast that also don’t possess either the skill or desire to modify their case. This is where companies like XG come in. They make cases and other products that are a little out of the norm so that you don’t have to look at a boring beige box sitting on your desk every day.

The Sidewinder Case

The Sidewinder case by XG was created to “take over the mid-range gaming machine case market” as quoted from the XG website. The focus of the Sidewinder case was to create a chassis geared towards mid-range gamers that was simplistic and functional in design, but still looked cool. In my opinion, XG hit the nail on the head with the Sidewinder case. The design of the case is clean, functional, and not overly showy. The only noticeably flashy part of the case is the chrome colored XG emblem on the front door of the case backlit with an led. And in my opinion, it looks pretty cool. Aside from that, the airflow capabilities of the case are quite incredible. There is the ability to mount either an 80mm or 120mm fan in the front of the case, 2 80mm fans on the side panel, and 2 80mm exhaust fans in the rear. The case ships with 2 80mm blue led XG fans in the side panel, and 1 80mm blue led XG fan in the front.

The paint job on the case is also quite nicely done, and as XG notes on their site, it is glossy enough to see your reflection in. However, unlike their Viper case reviewed, the inside of the chassis is not painted. The case we received for review is the black/red paint scheme. I think that the case would have had a bit more visual flare if XG had carried the red from the front of the case to the inside, giving the inside a nice glossy red paint job, especially since they have the window in the side panel. However, a positive aspect to the inside not being painted is that you don’t have to worry about scratching the paint while you put your machine together, or swap out components. Aside from the black/red paint scheme, XG also offers the Sidewinder in a blue/silver, and silver/black paint scheme.

Both of the side panels have Sidewinder written on them in red text, which I honestly think looks pretty good with the case. The side panels use the standard attachment style where you slide them back and then pull them out. The windowed side panel can be a little hard to remove since there is nowhere to put your fingers to gain any leverage, however, it really wasn’t that hard to remove. The right side of the case features the front mounted USB, Firewire, and audio ports. These are conveniently placed on the lower portion of the front bezel for easy access. I like this placement because they are out of the way, and don’t effect the look of the front of the case, but they are still easy to get to. The cables from your devices also won’t effect your usage of the optical drives since they are positioned on the side of the case. This is much better placement than in the Viper case we reviewed.

The back of the case is just your standard ATX case. The nice paint job was not carried to the back, which isn’t really important, but it would be a nice touch to give the outside of the case a nice uniform look.

The inside of the case is just like every other standard ATX case currently available as well. You have space for 4 5.25 inch drives, 2 3.5 inch drives with access from the front, and 4 hard drives. The 5.25 inch bays, and the hard drive mounts are riveted to the case, so they can not be removed. This may be a slight annoyance to some users, though it isn’t a big issue. However, it may become an issue for some users trying to put a 120mm fan on the front. As mentioned above, you can either mount a 80mm or 120mm fan in the front of the Sidewinder case. However, the 120mm fan that I have from my Asetek water cooling kit was too thick to fit into the front of the case. I know that my fan is a little thicker than most 120mm fans, however, this is something to take note of.

There is no removable motherboard tray, however, I’ve never used a case with one before, so this isn’t really an issue to me. There is plenty of room to mount the board and components inside of the case anyway, so this really shouldn’t be an issue.

The included 400 watt power supply is a nice touch as it is AMD and P4 ready, and includes a SATA power connector as well. However, 400 watts is maybe just a little underpowered for some of today’s gaming systems, even mid-range, with the graphics cards and other components we use. Also of note is that there are only 2 leads with 2 4-pin molex connectors on them, the ATX power connector, a P4 power connector, a mini 4-pin connector (for floppy drives, etc), and the SATA power connector. I didn’t use a very high-end set of components for testing this case, but I can say that there simply are not enough power connectors to properly connect everything together, and the leads are barely long enough to reach everything in the case.

Installation is exactly like any other ATX case on the market, so I’m not going to go through the process. All I’m going to note about installation is any issues I noticed, and anything I think is of importance to mention.

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