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.




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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.




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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.




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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.




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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.


Index External Design (cont'd)
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  • CrystalBay - Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - link

    Nice case,but I'll wait for a cheap knockoff, or a CM Stacker. That infrared heat graph is a nice effect though.
  • Operandi - Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - link

    Looks like a very nice case with horribly loud fans.

    Purav; For future reviews it would be nice if you would include more information on the fans, make model, RPM, CFM, ect.

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