Aluminum has been experiencing a bit of a renaissance in the notebook industry, spearheaded largely by Apple and now Intel's ultrabook initiative, but as a construction material for desktop enclosures it's largely been a specialty item. Most manufacturers use it in isolated places, usually as an accent, with entire cases built out of it becoming largely the purview of Lian Li...and not too many others.

Cubitek, on the other hand, has seen fit to employ it for an entire new line of cases under the "ICE Series". Five enclosures all using an almost entirely aluminum chassis and finish, ranging from the Mini-ITX "Mini ICE" all the way up to the grandaddy of them all and the enclosure that we have in for review today: the "HPTX ICE." The Cubitek HPTX ICE is as big as it gets and is able to support the biggest motherboards on the market, every spec from Mini-ITX all the way up to EATX and HPTX, and it has a supersized price tag to boot. But is it worth it?

The last time we reviewed one of SilverStone's Grandia enclosures, it was the GD04, and it was a review that launched the first major revamp of how we test cases. Since then SilverStone has kept the Grandia series relatively staid, but at CES they were showing off the new GD07 and GD08, and today we have the GD07 in house.

SilverStone has turned the GD07 into an enclosure designed to cram as much computer into as small a space as possible within reason, and the horizontal orientation seems to make it ideal for use as a media center enclosure. However, inside it also has a tremendous amount of storage capacity that suggests it could also be used as a media server. The GD04 was a fine case once you tweaked it and added a fan controller; is the GD07 ideal on the first go?

Today we will review a Codegen PSU. This product is not available in the US as they sell it in some European countries only, but it's still a nice representative of the low-end product range. In fact the P-Case 460W is a part of the Q3335-A2 bundle. They sell it with a good looking case for office use. With less than 30 EUR (about 40 USD; 04-27-2012) it appears to be a good offer, but we will see if they meet one's expectations.

Q3335-A2 bundle

Codegen is a well known brand for inexpensive power supplies. The P-Case 460W has passive PFC (no universal AC input) and no finish since most customers simply don't care how a PSU like this looks like. In addition there is no sleeving for the cables. The delivery contents of the bundle include a power cord and all necessary screws. You'll note that there's no 80 Plus certification on this one, which isn't too surprising considering the target market. Read on to find out if this PSU is still recommendable.

FSP is one of the largest manufacturers for OEM power supplies and adapters. Now they're launching a new fanless series, the "Aurum Xilenser", for users that want absolute silence. We have the AU-500FL on our test bench today. Like the previous Aurum offerings, the new generation is 80 Plus Gold certified. As for the fanless part, you'll want to be careful if you try for a complete silent (i.e. fanless) PC—it's one thing to have a fanless PSU when there are case and CPU fans to compensate, but entirely fanless systems will need some big heatsinks and an open chassis if you want reasonable performance.

The casing for the AU-500FL has more ventilation holes than we're used to seeing, with arrow-shaped perforations on every available spot! Besides the bottom (where a large fan might normally sit) and the back (to exhaust heat from your system), FSP has holes on the front and sides of the casing. Even the top (not shown, and assuming a top-mounted PSU; otherwise this is the "bottom") has a few extra holes to help with cooling. With no fan, there's obviously a need to remove heat and the extra ventilation should help in that regard.

Extreme budget enclosures are interesting creatures. While the best balancing acts usually show up around the $100 price point, and going north of $150 will generally get you the best of everything, hanging out at $60 or lower means having to make a lot of sacrifices and lose a lot of niceties. For some users that's not a big deal; they just want a box to put their computer in.

Fractal Design has been making a lot of waves with their lineup of minimalistic but effective enclosures, but most of those kits have been $80 or more. Today we have their Core 1000, a fascinating-looking case that retails for just $39.99. Does it bring the same magic to this end of the market that Fractal Design has brought with their other efforts, or has too much been left on the cutting room floor?

Towards the end of last year, I took a visit out to Antec's campus in Fremont to see two new cases: the headlining P280, and the shortly-to-follow Eleven Hundred. The P280 we've already reviewed; it's as much a complement to the existing P180 series as it is a refresh, but our review of the Eleven Hundred has been conspicuously absent since its launch. That's due to a combination of bad timing and the fact that, superficially, the Eleven Hundred has an awful lot in common with the P280, pushing other cases to the front of the line.

With the refreshed case testbed I decided it was time to take a look at the Eleven Hundred, if for no other reason than to at least get a comparison point that was similar to the P280 in our results. As it turns out, though the Eleven Hundred shares the same fundamental framework and chassis as the P280, the differences between the two are far more notable than they seem. Read on for more details on what the Eleven Hundred brings to the chassis party.

We've been keeping track of the evolution of Corsair's line of enclosures since the Graphite 600T was released. Even as the newer enclosures generally found themselves lower and lower in price, there was a clear evolution as Corsair's engineers gained more experience and confidence with their designs. Yet each new design up to this point has been a little bit of refinement and a little bit of experimentation without any specific specialization. That changes with the 550D.

There's definitely some experimentation going on here, and there has to be: the Corsair Obsidian 550D is the first case Corsair has engineered specifically for silent running. That's not all they've experimented with, though, as you'll soon see. Read on to see how the 550D handles our new and improved case benchmark suite, and if it can actually fill the role of a PC that's seen and not heard.

Over the past year we've tested more than twenty different enclosures using our existing testbed and produced a mountain of comparative data. The goal of the undertaking is produce actual case reviews rather than testing enclosures in a vaccuum. Our approach has allowed us to compare both cooling performance and acoustics between the cases we've tested.

That said, it was really our first effort at such an endeavor in some time, and since we started some minor inconsistencies began to creep up in our reviews and between test cases. Now that we have data under our belts, we're now taking measures to correct those inconsistencies for future tests, improve the quality of our results, and allow for more reliable comparisons. In other words, we're about to revamp our case testbed and methodology, and hopefully this setup can last us through the next year.

In this review we will compare two almost identical products from OCZ and Corsair. Even so, there are still some differences between the offerings. With 550W both PSUs deliver more than enough power for most current systems. On the following pages we'll find out which handle overload situations the best, who has the highest efficiency, and which PSU provides the best voltage regulation.

With sales of more than 100,000 PSUs each month, Corsair is one of the most important vendors for retail power supplies. They have a lot of experience even if they don't own a factory. In addition they are a leading manufacturer of SSDs and (good-looking) ATX cases. A few months ago Corsair presented the latest addition to their Enthusiast series. The TX brand has the goal of delivering low prices, quality, and high efficiency. Today we take a look at the TX550M 550W and find out if they meet the requirements. It's another solution with 80Plus Bronze, one +12V output and modular cables—quite common features.

Corsair TX550M vs. OCZ ZT550W 550W

The second unit we test today is a power supply from OCZ Technology Group. They're now famous for their SSDs, but they have many power supplies as well. We'll look at the OCZ ZT-Series ZT550W. OCZ is using an 80Plus Bronze design from Great Wall with a few changes in the details. The 80 Plus Bronze certification is standard for any decent PSU today, but maybe it's good enough to beat up Corsair. An advantage is the fully modular design, which is an uncommon feature for the mid-range price segment (except SilverStone's Strider Plus 500W).

We tested the Hive 550W a short while ago, and now Rosewill is following up with their Capstone series, which should be more efficient (80 Plus Gold certification). In this article we will see if the quality of this power supply can match the flawlessness of brands like Seasonic. The Capstone 450W and 650W are little different internally compared to the Hive models. All of the Capstone power supplies are targeted at the high-end market, so our expectations are quite high for this product.

The Capstone series has the goal of delivering performance, quality, and high efficiency; simply put, it's the best solution Rosewill can provide at the moment. The previous tested PSU was made by Sirtec (High Power), but the new models come from a different manufacturer. On the following pages we will show who built these PSUs. Read on to find out how it compares to other offerings.

Rosewill sent us their newest model Hive with 550W. The rated power makes these models good for most common GPUs as well as powerful CPUs. Features such as 80 Plus Bronze certification and modular cables are quite common these days, but such characteristics say little about how good a PSU really is. What about the internal design and components for example? Who built this PSU? On the following pages we will meet an old acquaintance with a new look and see if it's capable of keeping pace with the times.

We've recently tested the first 80 Plus Platinum PSUs to hit our labs, courtesy of Seasonic and Enermax. Both were good if expensive PSUs, and next up on the test bench is a Platinum series that's sold by a brand without their own PSU factory: XFX. They sent us their newest product, the Pro Series 80 Plus Platinum Black Edition, which sets its sights on the high-end of the market. XFX has created an interesting casing with some unusual elements, but we need to find out how good this model actually is.

While efficiency is all the marketing rage in the world of PSUs, we should keep in mind that many manufacturers are trying to reach 80 Plus Platinum levels using some "tricks". As we noted in our Seasonic article, there are various routes to higher efficiency, like removing resistors that may fill other roles. Shunt resistors for example transform some of the power into power loss when current flows through it, since there is a voltage drop. That's actually their job as they measure and prevent overcurrent in an indirect way. On the following pages we will show how XFX reached the requirements for 80 Plus Platinum (90%/92%/89% efficiency at 20%/50%/100% load), and we'll also discuss the ODM and how well the XFX model fares in an increasingly crowded market.

In a short time we've seen quite a few companies come out with their first 80 Plus Platinum power supplies. A couple weeks ago we reviewed the Enermax Platimax with 750W, which was a good PSU even though our testing showed slightly less than the advertised efficiency. Enermax also has a 500W Platimax unit, and there are several other brands launching or ready to launch 80 Plus Platinum offerings. Today we'll look at another sample, this time in the form of Seasonic's Platinum Series 860W.

One thing that all of the 80 Plus Platinum models have in common is that they are very expensive. Something else to consider is that there are only a limited number of companies that actually manufacture PSUs, building various models according to the specifications their partners request. Seasonic is one such company, and we can expect other brands to use variations of the Seasonic Platinum Series we're reviewing today. The 860W model we're looking at includes two different modes for controlling the fan speed, a fullly modular connector system, and DC-to-DC converters for two of the smaller output voltages. This sounds like another market leader; let's see how it fares under test and whether it can surpass Enermax's competing offerings.

The majority of the enclosures from Lian Li that we've tested so far have been designed for mini-ITX and micro-ATX builds, but today we have on offer one of their premium full ATX cases, and it's a promising one indeed. Lian Li's PC-90, which they dub "The Hammer," is designed to support HPTX and XL-ATX motherboards while being smaller and lighter than most other enthusiast cases in its class. And while we'd hesitate to call it diminutive, it's definitely smaller than you'd expect.

Lian Li aims to offer a lighter, more austere shell for high performance systems in the PC-90, and we can tell you they've been very successful. The PC-90 is also better than our prior experiences with Lian Li in that it performs right about where you'd expect. Read on for the full details.

Since the introduction of the 80 Plus certifications, we've seen a slow but steady trickle down effect where labels that were once reserved for the highest of the high-end (e.g. 80 Plus Gold) have eventually reached mainstream price points. Manufacturers including FSP, Rosewill, Sparkle, and SuperFlower now sell affordable 80 Plus Gold power supplies for less than $100. But if mainstream users are now able to get 80 Plus Gold, what should the high-end market offer? Enter 80 Plus Platinum:

Those looking for maximum efficiency can now set their sights on 80 Plus Platinum PSUs, which will be new halo market for high-end—and high cost—power supplies. To reach the necessary efficiency levels, some improvements are necessary that can change some of the core characteristics of a power. Improved resonant topologies, new MOSFETs for synchronous rectifying, higher switching frequencies, better drivers, and low-resistance conduction paths are just some of the things we'll see with 80 Plus Platinum. We're naturally eager to see what the new models can bring to the table, and Enermax sent us their Platimax 750W model, which uses an optimized Modu87+ design. Read on to find out if Enermax is the new efficiency king, and how it performs in other metrics.

The overwhelming majority of cases from SilverStone we've reviewed so far have been based on some very unorthodox designs, featuring layouts that feel ATX in name only. Yet when we visited with them at CES and they showed off the Temjin TJ04-E, we were surprised: at least superficially, the TJ04-E looked like a garden variety ATX case. It had SilverStone's usual clean lines and style, but everything seemed almost too normal. Thankfully we have the Temjin TJ04-E in house today, and while it may indeed look fairly by-the-book at first glance, SilverStone's mad scientists have tweaked quite a few things beneath the surface.

NZXT recently released the Switch 810, a new high-end full tower model they proudly had on display at CES at the same time they were seeding samples to reviewers. It's a looker to be sure, but NZXT's engineers also played a lot with the insides of the enclosure, and what they've put together is a chassis with a remarkable number of uncommon features designed to appeal to enthusiasts who want to maximize both the utility of their machines along with the control they have over that utility. It looks great on paper and great on display, but how does it work in practice?

NZXT is a well known provider of "eye-catching" cases and peripherals, but like many other brands they offer power supplies as well. These include the HALE90 series, their first 80 Plus Gold product to hit the market. While the HALE90 targets the high-end audience, NZXT also wants to cater to midrange users, and for that market they have their new HALE82 series that covers wattages from 650W to 850W. The rated output makes these models good for high-end single GPUs as well as moderate SLI and CrossFire systems. Features such as 80 Plus Bronze certification and modular cables are common these days, but such features say little about how good a PSU really is. Today, we're testing the 650W and 750W models, with our usual results on the following pages.

While flagship enclosures are certainly interesting and there are some great deals to be had even just north of $100, competition south of that border is mighty fierce and only becomes more so as manufacturers refresh their lineups with the latest trends and advances in chassis design. We've seen a lot of great options for end users looking to save some scratch, but we haven't had a chance to see what Antec can do in this market...until now. Antec is launching their new Three Hundred Two chassis, and if you're an enthusiast on a budget looking for the best cooling you can get without spending up for it, this may be the case for you.

The Cooler Master Cosmos is more or less legendary among top-of-the-line enclosures. It's not hard to see why, either: it's big, it has loads of expansion, and it looks like a giant refrigerator...for your computer. That said, some time has passed since the Cosmos originally landed with very little in the way of updates. Today, Cooler Master brings us the long-awaited update, the Cosmos II. With a $349 MSRP and a shipping weight of nearly fifty pounds, this enclosure is oversized in every way. Will it retain the cachet of its predecessors, though, or have advances in the computing market since the era of the original Cosmos left the Cosmos II a shiny relic of a bygone era?