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#860 - Sunbeam Quarterback Case |
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Written by Zach Jeffers
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Monday, 20 August 2007 |
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Page 4 of 5
Inside the Quarterback:
Taking the left side panel off of the Sunbeam Quarterback case, we can see the included clear 120mm fan and the eight chrome rivets that hold the window in place. The included 120mm fan that is located on the window has four bright Blue LEDs. The three other included clear 120mm fans do not feature the LEDs. This was very disappointing.
 
Looking at the inside of the Quarterback case, you will see that there is not a whole lot of room to work. This is largely due to the inclusion of the ‘Core Cooling’ design. What this is simple, is a bar going across the case enabling you to place two 80mm fans directly in front of CPU/Ram or PCI components. This option has obvious cooling benefits but the lack of full control of where the fans are positioned horizontally can possibly cause conflicts with extended expansion cards; ie: newer video cards from nVidia or AMD.
 
The ‘Core Cooling’ system features holes all the way up and down the bar allowing you to literally place the two included 80mm fans anywhere vertically along this track. From the factory, these fans are placed, one on either side, pulling air from the front of the case to the back components like the CPU and the VGA card. Though not easily done, the ‘Core Cooling’ system can be removed by removing a screw at the top and two at the bottom of the case. This is very annoying and makes it difficult to install hardware.
  
 
At the back of the Quarterback mid-tower, there are seven tool-less expansion bays. These have become pretty standard these days and are a nice feature if you are not using any third party PCI cooling system like the CoolIT PCI Cooling Booster. Above the expansion bays, you will see the standard I/O area, included clear 120mm fan (without LEDs) and PSU mounting area. The mounting area for the PSU does feature two support flaps to help secure those larger/heavier power supplies.
  
At the front of the case, you will find the internal 3.5” drive bays. To install a hard disk, you simply place the included drive rails in the appropriate screw holes and slide them into place. To the right, you will find available space for mounting an intake fan of your choice as it is not included. You will be required to remove the front bezel to do this however.
The external 3.5” and 5.25” drive bays feature integrated tool-less mounting. Simply slide your hardware in and lock it down. The picture of the 3.5” drive bays shows the top bay in the unlocked position and the bottom bay in the locked position. I honestly am not in favor of these types of static mounts as if you need to do a fine tuning on your bay device, you are not able to and you may end up with a Rom bezel sticking out too much causing the ‘door’ to stay open. They do make quick PC builds easy, but my personal preference is that they are not flexible enough in their configuration.
 
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