Open Air PC

After: Antec Skeleton (installed Sunday 13 December 2009) My own overclocking results, full PC specs, etc. Good review He makes a few other good points about a couple engineering misses in this initial model… e.g. must add your cards after!?! you slide in the tray…it’d be nice to think there will be a V2 someday. Honestly took me about 5 hours to set it all up… I went slow and methodical… nice thing was, everything fit and worked how I wanted upon first powerup. I think I like the new “Scythe Zipang 2” cooler I landed on… especially if it keeps up on the temps with only the big fan up top… haven’t had a chance to run a real “full crank” test to check temps yet… can’t wait to see what my top over clock is going to be now. There is more vertical clearance than I was anticipating (see photos below)… almost wonder if i could’ve gotten away with my existing vertical oriented cooler… but a horizontal form factor like this Zipang-2 definitely seems more in line with the big top down blower central to this design. No real change in the overall noise signature… still dead silent… I’m satisfied. It’s quite the beasts as far as desk footprint… I do really like being able to leave the motherboard flat. The only real downside for me is that previously I had full freedom for component placement such that everything was readily accessible from a preferred direction… once you go with “a box” of any kind you have to accept that certain things are going to be facing an undesirable direction because that’s how the industry has settled on a standard orientation for each part… so my feng shui is a little askew but otherwise it’s very nice that things like the iMON display now have  a proper home… And also it’s good for everything to finally be in a container so that once I do finally get my air compressor (that Sears has obviously bungled APO shipment and I never know if/when is actually going to arrive on this shore It finally arrived), I’ll be able to pick it up and take it outside to blow out all the dust.

Before: Raw Parts on a Shelf ;)  (circa April 2008)