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#703 - SanSun Galaxy BTX Case Print E-mail
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Written by Zach Jeffers   
Tuesday, 25 July 2006
Article Index
#703 - SanSun Galaxy BTX Case
Page 2: Packaging
Page 3: Case Layout and Specs
Page 4: Inside the Galaxy
Page 5: Modification and Use
Page 6: Conclusion

Inside the SanSun Galaxy:


With the right side panel off, you can see that SanSun has provided you a fun glob of cables and wires to mess with. These are not all marked and the case does not come with an instruction manual. Looking on their site resulted, also, in no manual. With the side panel removed, you can now remove the front bezel.



Looking at the mound of cables, I have sorted them out to be, a USB 2.0 cabe, an Audio cable, a Firewire cable, three thermal sensors (CPU, GPU and System), a single three pin cable for the blue LED's that light up the LCD display at the front, a single three pin for the two 80mm fans at the front, and a single four pin molex connector to power the front LCD display.



Looking to the back, inside the case, you can see that the SanSun case provides a tooless clip system for all your expansion cards. You can also see that there is no removable motherboard tray, and that the 120mm fan is mounted for exaust.


The bottom of the case holds a 3.5" drive cage. This is not tooless and requires you to screw down any 3.5" device that you would like to keep here. Looking at the underside of the case, you can see where you will have to screw down any 3.5" drive along with four white plastic feet. The fact that you have to turn the case on it's side along with the fact that their is no real way for air to flow through any hard drives, could deture many case buyers.




Another item overlooked is that the passage way from inside the case to the front bezel has not been rounded or curled over like those for the USB and Firewire ports. That on top of the fact that the door does not open all the way with out pulling on these wires, could cause slicing and shorting of the wires. Just think... no power button! SanSun has included a sleeve of fabric tape around the wires, but that can easily be sliced through too. The best solution for me was to talk these out by flipping up the bay cover and pulling them through. From the image below, you can see that the Galaxy case does not give you much length on the CPU, System and GPU fan leads!

Now to most viewers, the front of the inner chassis does not look much different to other cases we have reviewed. One big thing is that the upper six drive bays are almost completely blocking off all air flow! Only the lower three bay covers had a grill stamped out for air to pass through. With the front bezel only have a handful of small holes for the air to pass through in the first place, this additional blockage will ensure that most of the air provided by the front two 80mm fans, will not make it into the case! I see this as huge oversight on the part of SanSun and would recommend that they switch the bay covers to a stamped out version as found in the lower three drive bays. On the flips side, the bay covers do have tabs that can be used to resecure them if you want to put them back on after removal; a very nice idea not often seen.



Since I had the front bezel off, I figured we should take a look behind the grill. The bezel comes in three major sections : beauty rings, circle mesh grill, and then
the bezel door it'self holding the fans and LCD display. The second picture below shows us the hexagonal designed bezel for air flow. The third picture shows that the circular mesh grill is held on by tabs that are bet over, to clasp it'self onto the front bezel.



Taking the beauty ring off of the LCD display, you can see that the grilling around the edges of the ring, are accually backed with pieces of clear plastic. Also, SanSun uses two pieces of black tape to cover the exposed wires in the second picture. A little cheesy, but hey, it works. Looking at the LCD screen, you can see it is farely large and apears to be a higher quality of most LCDs that you see in many cases today. You can see from the picture below, that the LCD is surrounded with four blue LEDs that light the LCD display along with the two plastic pieces behind the grill.





 

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