Testing
The overall rating is made up of the following evaluation criteria:
- Workmanship of the case, side panels, front panel and connectors
- Edges and corners, accident risk on opening and during installation of hardware
- Installation of the motherboard and expansion cards, along with various power supplies and drives
- Cabling of the front connectors, drives, motherboards
- Expansion of hard drives and 5.25" drives
- Functions of the display, reading the values, handling
Hardware Used For Testing
To make the rating realistic, various hardware components were installed in the miditowers in question. The IC7-MAX3 from Abit served as a motherboard for the PC. An AGP-graphics card from MSI was fastened to it and - if the case allowed it - a 4-channel controller from Advansys. Although this card is not the latest model, the issue was whether or not a long PCI card could be installed. The hard drives used were a selection from diverse manufacturers. For a 5.25" drive, we had a 16x DVD drive from MSI on hand. For power supplies, we picked a Superflower model (integrated 140 mm fan) and a fanless power supply from Yesico. It was necessary for both power supplies to be installed separately without problem.
IC-7MAX3 motherboard from Abit as platform
Older graphics card from MSI: Here, all we had to do was install the card.
Advansys 4-channel RAID controller: Long cards should fit
Each case should be able to handle four 3.5" hard drives
Power supply from Superflower with extra-large 140 mm fan
Fanless power supplies are gaining in popularity because they don't make any noise
