How many of us have at one time or another wanted to modify something, whether it was a car or now you computers case. While 'modding' your case can be both easy and fun, many who wish to do this don't have enough time to mod their cases or the tools to do it properly. This is where comes in, they provide pre-modded cases for your enjoyment, and the envy of your peers.
We all need a case and as all the components inside of them get faster, they produce more heat. Some examples of this are the newest line of video cards which produce a fair amount of heat, even heating up to 40+°C without any stress being put on them. There is also the processor, which as we all know needs a heatsink and fan on it to keep it under 50°C. Lastly there are hard drives, which can, if they are 7200RPM versions, heat up to very high temperatures, in some cases too high for reliable running. Standard ATX cases are not designed to provide large unimpeded amounts of airflow needed to cool all these hot components inside a standard computer.
Today we will look at on of Xoxide's newer products, the C-6 Black Hawk. The name, while sounding like it's a helicopter, does describe the case fairly well as it is indeed black and has enough fans to rival any helicopter. But lets look at what this case has to offer above and beyond a standard mid-tower ATX Case.
The Case
As I just stated the case is not your standard 'gray' color, which is rather bland for most people, but is an extremely dark black color. In addition to this pure black case they decided to accent it with some chrome molding which does help it stay away from a generic case's single color motif. The case isn't very big when compared to a full tower case as it measures in at 430mm * 200mm * 440mm (H*W*D) or 16 10/11" * 7 8/9" * 17 7/22", which is taller than one other test case but is not as deep as that case.
There are a few things on the case that make it more than just a case painted black. The window on the side panel is about 13" X 9 3/4" and will give you a great view of your CPU socket area as well as the area up to your first AGP/PCI slot. This window can actually serve a grander purpose than just as 'window' dressing, if your CPU fan dies this will allow to see this as it happens and be able to take steps to save your CPU.
The other major modification to this case is the multitude of case fans, six in total, three intake and three exhaust. The fans are all the same model, a 80MM Sunon, Sleeve bearing fan that provide a airflow of 36.5CFM when running at 2700RPM. They also produce a fairly quiet 30dBA noise when running at 2700RPM.
The airflow is one thing that Xoxide has put some thought into. The first solution they used was the fans mentioned previously, which totaled 220CFM and was equal in air flow, 110CFM in and 110CFM out, not including a power supply. The second solution is that they made sure that they airflow was as unimpeded as it could be, as Xoxide has cut any case based grills out and replaced them with thinner grills (Notice the back of the case).
The one thing missing from this case is a power supply. This can be a good thing as it allows you to pick which power supply you wish to put in such as an Enermax or an PC Power & Cooling power supply rather than be put through the agony of a low quality generic power supply. This can also be a bad thing, as you have to pay extra for a power supply for the case.
What about the drive bays? Well as we can see from the front bezel there are 4 - 5 1/4" external drive bays and 2 - 3 1/2" external drive bays, enough for your good old floppy disk drive and a Zip drive as well. The inside of the case shows what other drive bays there are that cannot be seen from the front of the case. There are an additional 4 - 3 1/2" drive bays though personally there are only 5 total usable drive bays as one comes extremely close to the magnetic case speaker. Three of the useable bays are located right behind the two front case fans, and as such any hard drives installed there get the benefit of the airflow provided by these fans.
Installation
The inside of the case is fairly open as most mid tower ATX cases are. The case itself is made from steel, which while not being as light as aluminum is still used in many cases due to its cost and strength. There are almost no spots inside the case where you could cut yourself, unlike many 'cheap' cases in which installing your computer could almost provide enough blood loss to warrant going to the hospital. One complaint I do have with the interior of the case is that the motherboard tray does not slide out, like other cases do (Inwin Q500, Lian Li Cases) which makes it harder to install a new motherboard when you have all the drives already installed. The fact that a magnetic speaker is installed strikes me as odd, as one could easily use a newer smaller and less magnetic speaker (see the picture below on the left for the newer speaker style) for this purpose.
The actual installation went fairly well but there were a few problems. My Epox 8K3A+ board that I used for testing, which is a full width ATX board, was running into one of the hard drives thus making the IDE cables harder to attach correctly for the 4 hard drives and the DVD drive, as the picture below shows. The installation otherwise was fairly easy and went without any other problems.
Test Setup
System Setup
| CPU: |
AMD Athlon 1.25GHz @ 2.06v - 89.2 Watts |
| Motherboard: |
Epox 8K3A+ (BIOS: 3/28/2002)
|
| Memory: |
256MB PC2700 @ 2.5-3-5 2T |
| Hard Drives (In Order: Top-Bottom): |
40GB Maxtor 5400RPM (VL 40), 8.4GB Quantum CR 5400RPM, 20GB Quantum LM 7200RPM, 40GB Maxtor 7200RPM (D740X)
|
| Video Card: |
Hercules Prophet 4500 (Kyro II) (175/175MHz) |
| Operating System: |
Windows 2000 Professional Service Pack 2 |
| Front Side Bus |
166MHz (333MHz DDR) |
| Other Cards: |
Sound Blaster X-Gamer 5.1, ATi TV Wonder, D-Link 538TX NIC |
| Coolers: |
Alpha PAL-8045T (50CFM Sunon Fan) |
| Cases: |
Xoxide C-6 Black Hawk, InWin Q500, DSP Generic Case |
| Power Supply: |
Enermax EG365P-VE 350Watts |
Test Systems
Here are the comparison cases used in this review:
The case on the left is an InWin Q500 that had only two exhaust 80mm case fans blowing out the back of the case. The dimensions of this case are, 600 mm * 200 mm * 432 mm (H*W*D) or for those of you using inches, 23 5/8" * 7 7/8" * 17 1/16". Of the fans used one was a generic low RPM fan and the other was a Thermaltake TT-8025A-2B.
The other case, modded by myself was, 405mm * 197mm * 460mm (H*W*D) or 15 16/17" * 7 5/7" * 18 2/19". The only case fans are seen in the picture, a 60mm intake fan and a 80mm exhaust fan of which both were generic low RPM fans.
The thermal probe used to measure the temperature of the hard drive was a CompuNurse display. A Maxtor 40GB D740X series hard drive with both acoustic management and write verify turned off, was used as the test hard drive. The probe's placement is as shown below, with the probe being under the electrical tape:
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|
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Back of the drive |
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Front of the Drive |
Tests
As this case has a large amount of fans, one can easily believe that one of its goals is to help overclockers reach their highest overclock while staying nice and cool, and as such we will test this case as such a performance case.
One of the main producers of heat inside a computer is the processor, so I tested each case with a Athlon 1.26 GHz processor running at 2.06 volts which produces 89.2 watts of heat. The test was run using Sisoft Sandra's Burn In test with 30 repetitions of Multi-Media and Arithmetic tests. Do the fans of the C-6 give it a noticeable advantage over the full tower Q500 or the generic ATX case? Lets see:
Do the extra fans of the C-6 show any improvement over the other cases? It does lower temperatures compared to the InWin tower case, by about 3°C which is a noticeable difference. The 5°C difference between the Black Hawk and my poor old modded case is very nice to see, and helps this case rise to the top of this small group. But as we stated at the beginning of this article the CPU is not the only source of heat, lets look at one overlooked piece of hardware, the hard drive.
Hard drives are spinning faster and faster, formerly most IDE drives spun at 5400RPM. Now many hard drives, in addition to having high density platters, are spinning at 7200RPM, former SCSI territory. As such hard drives are getting hotter, the IBM Deskstar problems recently are an example of heat (and other issues) related problems that hard drives can/are running into. This case has provided for this by having the two 80mm fans right where the hard drives are logically to be put. Does this help? The following tests were done with a 18GB video file encoded in HuffYUV (9000Kb/s) copied to the same drive, different folder, using Virtualdub. Lets look at the hard drive temperature results:
We can see that the addition of the two front fans does improve temperatures of our test hard drive. A 7°C drop from a large tower case to the C-6, and a 19°C(!) drop between the C-6 and my case is astounding, as both are about the same size with the major difference being the fans of the C-6. It is very nice to see that the extra fans of the C-6 have been put to good use, unlike some cases were the fans are just there for show rather than for any cooling ability.
How loud was the case? Unfortunately, I didn't have a sound meter on hand but the case was very quiet with the monster 50CFM Sunon fan on my heatsink turned off. The sound levels were about that of the hard drives, thus not really adding any very loud noise to the system.
Conclusion
What can we conclude about this case? First lets look at the outside of the case, it is very different from your standard case in that it is black and chrome instead of gray. The window was a very nice touch that many people are beginning to like, though I can't really see why. The fans are covered by nice grills and all the cut edges for the fans are smoothed over, lessening any accidental cuts.
The inside of the case is, as most ATX cases are, spacious and open. There are no sharp edges to be found. and believe me I tried to find some. The amount of drive bays is very good, and the fact that they go all the way to the bottom of the case is a nice touch. Installation wasn't as nice as it could have been, as a removable motherboard/card tray is missing, and the fact that the case isn't deep enough, shown by the hard drives reaching right up to the IDE connectors. A very small issue was that the speaker used was an older more magnetic speaker compared to the newer smaller speakers in some of the newer cases.
The fans do their job very well, as the tests show, a 3°C drop in CPU temperature, a 7°C drop in hard drive temperature, and a 9°C drop in case temperature in comparison to an InWin Q500. They aren't loud fans either, in fact the only complaint I have about the fans is the fact that they are sleeve bearing fans instead of the 'better' ball bearing fans.
The price of this case is another sticking point, as this case costs about as much as a Lian Li PC10/12/20/30 aluminum cases for the same price. In fact the separate pieces including a generic power supply would come to about the same as this cases' price.
There is no doubt that this is a very good case, but the price is a bit high to be recommended fully. As it sits if you are looking for a good looking, performance mid tower case that isn't loud then this case is definitely for you.
I would like to thank Chris @ for their great patience with me, the service aspect of this company is something other companies could look to as an example.
Pros
- Cools very well
- Looks very nice
- Quiet Fans
- Has a window
Cons
- Price
- Motherboard/hard drive problems
- No Power supply included
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