Enermax has long been known as a high quality manufacturer of power supplies, however they also make computer cases. This Enermax CS-003-A106 case is a really nice, it comes with an Enermax 300w Pentium 4 ready power supply. It has a top and side blow hole, and has lots of other areas where you can put fans. This case comes with 4 5.25 bays, 2 visible3.5 bays and 4 hidden. The case is very sturdy and not flimsy and thin like a lot of cases.
The box is nice and thick so that the case is protected during shipping, it also has some of the specs of what’s inside.
The case is also nice and protected inside with Styrofoam and in plastic to prevent scratching. You get screws and motherboard mounts, a 3.5″ faceplate, and a power supply cord. You also get a 300w power supply which we will look at later.
The front of the case is really cool looking with a blue bezel, it comes with 2 3.5″ bays where you can put drives, you can also cover one up with the bay cover provided. The power button has 2 green LEDs and the HDD LED is red. The only thing I really would like to have seen on the front bezel is a spot for a case badge. The back of the case has a spot for 2 80mm fans, these can also should be cut out for better air flow.
The top of the case has a precut blowhole which is not quite what I expected it’s more of a pattern cutout rather than a blowhole. It would have been nice to see it totally cut out hole and a fan grill, the fact that it’s just a pattern cutout is going to cut down on airflow. The side hole is basically the same thing, a pattern cutout which acts as the grill.
You can see from both pictures the fans are mounted with black plastic pushpin type things which hold the fan in place, Enermax should have used screws instead. I went ahead and changed then to regular fan screws because they work and look better.
The power supply that you get with this case is an Enermax EG301P-VE, which is 300w. Here are some of the specs of it. I also opened it up to take a look inside.
- Meet ATX 2.03 & ATX +12V 1.1 Version. Pentium 4 supported
- Compliant with AMD K7.
- Thermal control fan
- Fan speed monitoring by M/B
- +5Vsb output current 2.2A output
- Noiseless & High MTBF
I was excited to see that the cables on this Enermax power supply were not extremely long like the one I previously reviewed. The length of the cabling on this power supply is much more reasonable, especially for this case. The power supply comes with all the connections needed for AMD and Intel.
It has the motherboard ATX plug, 5 Molex plugs, 2 berg plugs, a 12v plug for Pentium 4 motherboards, an AUX connection for Intel server motherboards, and a plug for a motherboard header which will monitor the RPMs from the fan inside the power supply.
The backside of the side of the case holds the 80mm fan for the side blowhole, both of these fans for the side and top are Power Logic brand and have 4 pin Molex plugs, I looked every where to find some specs on these fans but could find nothing. Both fans do not come with grills which is also a minus, who knows how many times i’ve been working inside of my computer and had a fan blade take a bite out of me.
Upon opening the case I was impressed, the inside of the case was nice and open with a lot of cool features. There is enough room by the top blowhole that if you decide to change the PSU in the future it should accommodate any other. As you can see the case has 4 5.25″ bays, 2 3.5″ bays where you can put a floppy and another drive, as well as 4 hidden bays to hold your hard drives.
The back of the case like I mentioned before will hold 2 80mm fans which is a nice feature for cooling, if you want to get the most out of them I would suggest cutting along the edge to get a real hole. Another feature which I really like is the fact that you get 6 expansion slot covers, not only did you get a lot of them but they are the good kind which you can remove and reuse instead of the kind you punch out and have to throw away.
Taking a look at the front of the case from the inside you can see that it can hold a 120mm or 80mm fan, you can also see the jumpers on the left and a little of the PC speaker at the bottom. The cutout for the 120mm is better than the blowhole and side hole, however if you are going to use it I would suggest cuting it out for better airflow. If you look at the bottom of the case while the bezel is attached you can see that the air is going to be pulled from the bottom in-between the case and the bezel, this isn’t much room for over 100CFM to be pulled through which a 120mm fan can easily do.
The bezel of the case uses 6 screws, 3 on each side on the inside to hold it on. I find it much easier and faster when a case has clips or something of the sort which holds the bezel in place rather than screws. Usually when I am in a hurry I don’t want to have to unscrew 6 screws.
I went ahead and unscrewed all 6 screws and pulled the bezel off, it is a 2-piece unit which has 6 clips that hold the 2 pieces together, these are the kind of clips that should have been used to hold the bezel on the case. As you can see there is the power button with its 2 LEDs, the reset button, and the hard drive LED. They are easy to get to which means they will be easy to change.
Before I continue any further I must point out that every edge on this case is very smooth, there are no sharp edges or jagged pieces. Every part of this case that I touched was great which is something I really love, it can hurt quite a bit when you slice yourself on your case.
This case does not come with a slide out motherboard tray which is kind of a pain, instead of being able to pull the tray out and have an open workspace you have to do everything inside the case. The first thing I did was to get 6 motherboard standoffs, and thread them into the appropriate location, I like the fact that you get so many of them along with screws, I always end up loosing some.
I then placed my motherboard in the case on the standoffs and screwed it into place. I then installed my video card and NIC. I pulled this system out of another case so I just left the CPU, HSF, and RAM in. everything went in great with no hassle, I have worked with some cases where its a struggle to get the motherboard and cards to go where they are supposed to.
I then installed my CDROM, hard drive and floppy, again everything went in smooth with no problems. With other cases a lot of the time you have to struggle to get them in right, but just like the motherboard and cards everything went smooth. There is a ton of room in this case and if I took 15 minutes to clean it all up it would look awesome.
Test Bed
- MSI KT7 Pro 2-A
- Duron 800Mhz
- 512MB PC133 RAM
- Asus v7700 Geforce 2 GTS
- 300w Antec PSU
I will be using a thermal probe to take all of the tempatuires from the CPU. I first booted up the computer without the fans on and let it idle for about 30 minutes and took the readings. I then used Prime95 to torture test the CPU and bring it to its load temperature. Not too bad, but lets turn those 2 fans on that came with the case and see what the results are.
Same test before, I even left the CPU hot, I did not let the computer cool down. I shut the computer down long enough to plug both fans in and rebooted. The fans were a little loud, and sounded kind of funny because of the way that the way the holes are designed. I had the side fan blowing air into the case and the top one sucking air out of the case. Again I let it idle for about 30 minutes and took the readings. The idle temperature was 4.8 degrees Celsius lower with the fans. I then used Prime95 to torture test the CPU and bring it to its load temperature. Again the fans did their job, this time 5.8 degrees Celsius lower than without the fans, very impressive!
Conclusion
Overall I really like this case, there are so many great features that the small negative points are totally blown out of the water. Every negative thing about this for the most part can be easily fixed with some simple mods. If you are going to buy this case I would suggest the following, I would cut the blowhole and side hole to be 92mm so that I could have better airflow and get some regular screws to attach the fans.
I would also suggest that if you are going to use a 120mm in the front that you provide a better intake. I really like that Enermax took the time to make this case user friendly, all the edges are nice and smooth and the case has lots of room to work in.
You get a great power supply and this case has great modding potential, this case retails for about $60 on Pricewatch which is an awesome price considering all you get. If you are looking for a new case I would really recommend this one to you. I would like to again thank Franky from Enermax for sending this case to review.
Pros
- Looks awesome
- Great price
- 300w P4 ready power supply included
- Cables on power supply NOT too long
- 2 fans included
- Drops CPU temperatures considerably
- All edges are smooth
- 6 good expansion slots included
- Lots of bays
- Lots of places for fans
- Lots of room
Cons
- No motherboard tray
- No fan grills or screws
- Bezel attached with screws
- No case badge area
- fan holes not completely cut out
- It’s a little loud