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Written by Dusan Srbljak
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Sunday, 09 September 2007 |
This case belongs to the so-called SuperTower category, which means spacious. Case dimensions are 537x223x637 (in millimeters). The case was manufactured in high-quality steel and plastics, and the finishing touch is just perfect. Its weight, however, is an entire 21.92 kg, and therefore hardly fits in the "portable" category. This is sure to chase away all those who like to carry their cases around LAN parties.
It's worth mentioning that there is also an aluminium-based version weighing "only" 14.61 kg. However, as this is a case with a water-cooling system, it is not really recommendable to "toss" it around. The front side of Kandalf has a door with a dust-stopping filter. The door itself has a built-in radiator whose cooling is provided by three ThermalTake 120 mm fans certified to 1300 RPM and 17 dBA, one of which has blue LEDs. We only have compliments for ThermalTake's engineers, mostly because the radiator was placed technically outside of the case, which both decreases its temperature and helps reduce the overall heat of the liquid in the system.
On the front panel, nine 5.25" drive bays are free for use, which is more than enough. One of these is reserved for the floppy drive. Another nice touch was a removable drawer placed in one of the bays, in which you can put a USB flash disk, CDs etc. Power and Reset buttons are placed in the first (on top) drive bay, but can be placed anywhere on the front panel. The upper panel is also very well designed. The case is full of little holes here, which works perfectly in symbiosis with a supplied 90 mm fan (1800 RPM, 19 dBA). Behind the hidden "click-clack" round cover there are two external USB ports, audio in/out and a FireWire port. The side panel is transparent and nicely stylized, and possesses two precise latches. One of them has a tiny lock with a key inside.
In the PSU-mounting part there is also a 3.5" HDD cage which can be easily extracted with no tools whatsoever, as everything functions based on the bar pressure system. The cage itself (as well as the hard disks installed inside) are kept cool by a 90 mm fan (again, 1800 RPM, 19 dBA), which is placed in such a way to guarantee that the air intake is always from the outside of the case. Underneath that fan, there is another 120 mm one with a blue LED (same specs as the other 120 mm fans in the case) assigned with the task of ejecting the hot air out of the case.
Everything is made in such a way to remove the need for tools, and in case of mounting any sort of PCI or graphics card, all that it takes is to press the little "trigger" to (un)secure the slot. We tested this system with an 8800GTS card (which is quite heavy) and can only say that there was no physical instability in any way. If you don't fancy the position of the aforementioned HDD cage for some reason, there is another one that can be mounted instead of three 5.25" drive bays; in that case, the radiator fans are cooling the HDDs.
The most attractive part of this case is definitely the water system. This system consists of the aforementioned radiator, CPU water block, pipes, pump, reservoir and of course liquid. The water block is massive and well-polished, as well as excellent in performance, as it turned out later. It is installable on all popular platforms. The plexiglas of the block has a blue LED which can be connected to a motherboard via the 3-pin connector.
This provides a nice effect in a darkened room. The pipes are green and have a 3/8" diameter, just like all of the other components. The liquid is also green and UV-respondent, providing a very nice sight if you have UV lamps in the case. There are two half-litre bottles of cooling liquid supplied with the case. One bottle was enough in our system, but if you plan on installing a GPU water block as well, for instance, the other one would have to be opened.
Pump and reservoir are one whole. The pump is certified to 500 l/h, and the transparency of the pipes enabled us to make sure that the flow was - perfect. The reservoir has a liquid level indicator.
The performance of this system is as expected - great. An overclocked Q6600 CPU working at 3.6 GHz is a serious challenge to even the best air coolers, so it presented a fitting challenge for a water-cooling system as well. With a room temperature of 25 degrees, Kandalf didn't allow the CPU to go over 67 degrees under full load. All things considered, the price of this case is not unreal, and with all its great attributes, we declare this case - approved. |
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