Chenbro Gaming Bomb II: Anyone for Upscale Gaming?
by Purav Sanghani on December 14, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
External Design
Usually, we begin our look at the external design of the case at the front bezel, since that is usually what we notice first. With the GB2, however, we noticed two handles at the top of the case before anything else. The handles are placed at the front and back of the chassis and are reminiscent of those on Apple's G5 cases.
Click to enlarge.
While we're at the top of the chassis, we noticed a square shaped vent for a 92mm fan that can be mounted to exhaust air. We will talk more about that in the Cooling section.
Moving back to the front of the GB2, we see a well-designed bezel with clean, straight and rounded edges. At the top, we see on the right are the HDD activity LED, the reset button, and the large square-shaped power button, which has the Power LED integrated into it. The large size of the power button makes it easy to press while the reset button's small size keeps unwanted reboots from happening. The reset button is a bit too small, though, for even an averaged sized finger to press.
Click to enlarge.
Next, we see four 5-1/4" drive bay covers and two 3-1/2" drive bay covers. Each can be easily taken off by removing two screws for each cover.
Click to enlarge.
At the bottom of the chassis, we notice the auxiliary ports, which include a FireWire port, two USB ports, and the standard audio input/output ports. Each is labeled clearly with the standardized icons.
Click to enlarge.
Pulling on the front bezel from the left side, we were able to open the bezel door. By doing this, we can now remove the drive bay covers by undoing the screws on each side. From the picture, we see a clear plastic molding that holds the HDD LED, reset and power buttons in place along with the aluminum grill and auxiliary ports at the bottom of the bezel.
Click to enlarge.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
42 Comments
View All Comments
hoppa - Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - link
does anyone else think its unfair and incredibly biased (and unjournalistic) that they dont make a single mention of the noise this thing puts out in the conclusion? come on! this thing is on par with the noisiest case they've ever reviewed and they do all they can to skirt the issue. this thing is as loud as a f*in lawnmower! BS, if you ask me.Jackular - Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - link
Good to see that the case fans are with the 3-pin connectors (I got Zalman's fanmate and multi-connector to get the fans into different volts). It's loud as default (with 12V) but how "loud" are they at 5V or 7V? This is something I would really like to know about.ViRGE - Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - link
Looking at the case, for the price given, there's 1 critical flaw that really hurts it: the placement of the front Aux ports. Aux ports are only useful if you can reach them, and the bottom of the case is next in the line of unreachable spots just head of the rear of the case. If I'm buying a high-end case, the Aux ports MUST be at least mid-way on the case if not ideally at the top.Noli - Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - link
The question on value is simple - $240 for the (near equal) noisiest case Anandtech has review is crap value plain and simple. This then begs the questions others asked about the fans. It seems very strange that 2x 120mm fans should be so loud so does replacing them with decent alternatives (panaflo etc) put it on par with an Antec with 2x 120mm in terms of noise? I'd hope with such a discrepancy that a little bit more journalistic investigation would have come naturally - if I spend $240 I want to know if replacing the fans is a solution or if there is an inherent flaw in the design. Apologies for rant.Wolfz - Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - link
What is the heat performance like with the third fan installed?Would switching the fans to (better/quieter?) ones reduce the sound significantly?
Are they suppose to be stuck at 3200 rpm's, I thought it was standard to have variable speed fans running inside the system. Is there any sort of mod you can do to handle that?
bldckstark - Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - link
I think the different length stand-offs were for different sized boards. The 1/3" are for universal locations, and the 1/8" with the add-on part are for customizable locations for different board sizes. That seems reasonable to me, and not a negative. Also, thanks for finally agreeing that a removable MB tray is not such a great feature. I got tired of seeing cases ripped for something that even most enthusiasts don't use. Now, about testing cases with their own PS's. Do them with the stock PS, and with your own so I know if I need to buy a new PS with the case or not. Better yet, benchmark the PS if it is a part of the sale just like you would any other part of the case it comes with.Good review by the way. Keep up the good work, and remember you can't please everybody, so try to please me instead.
Avalon - Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - link
I was really starting to like the case until I read the price. I was expecting half of that, at the most. Jesus.TinyTeeth - Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - link
Interesting. But damn, a Coolermaster Wavemaster with 120mm fans would be perfect!LoneWolf15 - Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - link
In response to #6, I agree on the dodge about whether this case is worth our money. I also agree with #8, finally a review of a case that isn't a downright tacky pre-mod.I had wanted this case at one point and waited several months. However, I had extremely poor communications response from Chenbro, who ignored two of my three e-mails, and never gave me the information I needed on pricing and availability. I ended up buying an Antec P160 with the window, and modding a custom 120mm blowhole on top, a feature that I wanted that the Chenbro has. I'm glad I bought the Antec; $240 even for a case as nice as the Chenbro is ridiculous. I paid half that for the Antec, which is a topnotch design, and used the money I saved to do things like sleeve the power supply and rebuild the system.
One more thing: The review was very well done on the case itself. My compliments, it's one of the better reviews I've seen here in a long time.
Aquila76 - Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - link
$240?!? This isn't a server case, it's a gaming case. I'd rather blow the 240 on a video card or a 500GB RAID 0 SATA array. Maybe they should call it the Chenbro Duesenberg!