Getting To Know The Maven Pure
With a thick face panel that wraps around the sides, Steiger Dynamics’ Maven chassis resembles the super-expensive S15V from OrigenAE, but with a smaller access panel and no digital display. Rather than hide the Blu-ray burner behind a door, Steiger Dynamics uses a slot-loading version.
The smaller panel hides a simplified connector set, with two USB 3.0 ports, headphone and microphone jacks, and an SD flash media interface.
The Maven chassis doesn’t have any rear-panel fan mounts, and instead has a 140/120 mm mount on its lid. This gives Steiger Dynamics more room for the super-quiet, closed-loop liquid cooler in our test configuration.
Note that the I/O panel port section represents Asus’ Z97-A. A recent switch to the similar Z97-AR helped Steiger Dynamics ditch the integrated VGA and DVI-D ports, while retaining the DisplayPort and HDMI outputs. The removed connectors are even less important to anyone who orders their system with a discrete graphics card, as shown.
Corsair’s H60 quietly cools Intel’s Core i5-4690K, EVGA’s GeForce GTX 770 pushes pixels quickly without much acoustic output, Seasonic’s Platinum Power SS-660XP2 feeds those devices at nary a whisper, and the entire assembly relies on high-efficiency components and reduced thermal output to retain low fan speeds.
Two Kingston HyperX 120 GB SSDs in RAID 0 offer exceptional performance noiselessly, while a 3 TB Western Digital Red drive provides NAS-oriented mechanical storage for user data. Super-thick panels keep most of the hard drive’s noise from being transferred out of the case, and foam padding on all large surfaces helps prevent it from being reflected out of the Maven’s vents.