2003 Winter Case Review Part 2: The ATX Avalanche

Aspire: X-Alien, Continued

It is obvious that the internals of the X-Alien have their origin in many of the other cases that we have seen before. The aluminum construction is the big story, as it is a material change that makes the case much lighter and easier to handle. The primary construction is slightly thinner aluminum than that of the X-Superalien. The construction appears to be hard tooled using primarily rivets for a great deal of the construction.

The X-Alien is available in black, silver, red, blue and yellow, in addition to the green colored model that we received. The quality of the paint on our sample case was quite good, but still pales in comparison to the automotive style finishes that we have seen on other cases. The box was well packed with plastic covering both sides of the X-Alien's window, a nice attention to detail by Aspire to prevent the window from being damaged. The green is quite striking and the picture of the case that you see here doesn't really do this case justice. The included black trim works well to make the black bezel optical and black bezel floppy drives not look out of place behind the door of this case.

The door on our sample unit was slightly out of alignment, which prevented the door from closing flush every time. Because the door and door hinges are plastic, door realignment isn't really possible. Also, it should be pointed out that while it appears that the front of the door bezel might light up, it does not.

Inside the X-Alien.

The construction of the case overall is good. The case did exhibit a little bend, but very little twist. The case features an aluminum construction with a variety of rolled and dulled edges. The tops of several of the rolled edges were a little rough, but not sharp. The round vent holes around some of the 5-¼" drive bays, however, were borderline sharp. The good news is that normally you should not get your fingers near them, so you are pretty safe from cuts on this one.