Gadgetory

hello and welcome to another Harbor Canucks review today we've got the air-cool cyclone 2 with the upgrade USB ports this case is very exciting for its Starla now that my friends is a blast from the past that's how we used to start all of our case videos what's up guys I'm Dimitri and today I'm bringing you something unique and different taking a look at an enclosure from 2011 so about seven years ago from air cool this cyclone - sometimes it's fun to go in the past and re-review things that we thought back then we're like the state of the art the highest and premium products but now let's see exactly how we have evolved from seven years ago I really appreciate the handle more Keys boxes need to have a camp head back there she is so this is a really interesting composition in the frame that you see we have a case from 2018 case from 2011 I'm super excited to see what the experience would be like in building something like this and doing cable management right now we have so much focus on kayo management with modern enclosures that you know what was the experience like seven years ago well let's see for ourselves right after this menu and there Mac slick fusion is their first addressable RGB all-in-one cooler with a standard 240 ml rad and absolutely beautiful RGB ring elimination on the fence and the pump to highlight that unique flow indicator through the transparent top check out the lake fusion down below so I feel like the warning signs for extremely restrictive front intake go all the way back to 2011 because this front panel is hilarious not only in its design format but also functionality so from a design perspective actually blends very well with this whole like you know jet engine side looks which are LEDs and they're not there for air flow but check this out we have this little perforation on the front but on the back here there's nothing it's completely closed so there's no air coming in or out out of this entire front panel so we just have the optical bay area and the little floppy disk area - and you can see the gloss spreads all the way to the top panel and here we have this really cool kind like jet engine kind of an exhaust looking plate but it's kind of pointless because there is no fan underneath so I'm not sure why this exists but you can see gloss in 2011 is kind of acceptable right so why is it still present on most modern cases mesh if I see we have this disgusting gloss on the interior panel not cool so this is actually the upgraded version with 2 USB 3 s you know colored headphone jacks there's an eSATA port for the O which I find hilarious the power button it's actually game discreet kind of this like thin in the top and it's nice and large but the reset button is hidden over here and also has a really nice tactile feel to it now I do appreciate their commitment to making sure their case format fits some form of like a unique design element so it says star cruiser here which matches the whole jet engine sort of front facade here but it also has cyclone on the front and air cool so I feel like their cohesion element was a bit lacking back in the day oh my god we have thumb screws the days before tempered glass was everywhere so this is acrylic and it's like a mix between you know so we can actually populate the fan here but they forgot one crucial thing there is no dust filter but yeah fans on the side panel is definitely a trend that has been dead for a while so let me know if you want to see it come back in cases down the line oh my god look the actual jet engine parts are part of the side panel that's hilarious wow what a removable hard drive cage in 2011 Dan because you know you want that extra graphics card clearance what does the back look like huh it's actually not bad at all I mean the grommets cutouts could be slightly bigger there's a side this is the amount over here hmm no bad at all no wonder this case was over a hundred dollars when it was launched I mean look at all this additional material and the tooling required to attach the plastic onto the side panels we got it for around 30 euros thanks to caseking for the hook up the metal side panels by the way are super thin I feel like I can bend it with just my thumb yeah yeah look at all the dust okay for airflow a single 140 mm fan is included with blue LED although it is completely choked ah it looks like you can't install a fan above here that's why this whole top looks this way mm-hmm got it and you can see the rest of the LEDs are spread through the low you know engine holes that are routed through these little wires over here one of them already popped out oh and you gotta appreciate the little shark sticker in the middle of the fan where is the consistency we have the star cruiser we have the cyclone and now we have the shark and taking a look at the inside it looks a little bare bones for today's time but back in the day this is actually really high quality stuff so we have this blue interior color scheme going on you know the five and a quarter inch little lock mechanism have the same color the removable drive cage is colored in the same blue as the rest of the body so it matches very well the bottom drive cage is non removable it is riveted but it is not actually attached to the motherboard tray so you could potentially remove this without affecting the structural integrity of the entire frame the optical drive is also riveted we have that additional fan at the top for exhaust I'm guessing and we have an additional 120mm fan for the rear exhaust I do like these PCI brackets that are also in blue and there are no thumb screws instead we have these nice silver screws here and the flock of cables it's actually not too bad I see maliks connections you know that's obviously a sign that something is outdated but I'm sure that's just for the lighting but at least the audio cables black this would be an easy job for cable management and unfortunately the only dust filter in this entire case is at the bottom for your power supply which is good but nowhere else on the case so I am genuinely impressed at what you get in 2011 two fans that are LED based we have removable drive cage with plenty of hard drive you know population we have an SSD caddy in the back we have an additional fan that is hidden it's kind of like discreet you know in this optical area and the entire motherboard area seems open you know there is no power supply shroud but those key we later and so now it's about time you put a system into this thing and see how it performs what do you know the lighting on the front panel does not work the morgues connection for some reason it's not sending power to the leds the rear fan is working fine and it's very bright spilling a lot of light on to the interior so the front fan is also working the front fan is actually not illuminated so the actual LEDs have been removed and been placed on to the front panel but yeah they're not receiving power so instead I put a cable mod LED strip in the front panel so we can see what the case looks like because I mean that's the whole attraction of this entire enclosure and also can we just take a second and admire this beautiful reflection on the wall it's coming from inside the case but there's a lot of like things blocking the LED strip so however this light is being reflected from inside the case looks absolutely beautiful and look at these light streaks on the bottom actually the look thing that looks really cool I don't think we'll see anything become the standard in terms of you know illuminating the exterior for your future cases but this visual accidental artifact is appreciated all right so for me this entire assembly process and the experience has been weirdly familiar you know if you would take like a 20-17 mid-tower you would have to take all the same steps to achieve like a clean cable management system and make sure that all your hardware fits where it should and over the years it's interesting to see how things have changed so we no longer see these game redesigns this is the definition of what people avoid the five in the quarter inch drive area has definitely been removed from today's cases but I wonder why if we had four of them in the first place maybe have a DVD drive a CD drive so you can you know copy the discs and stuff like that but why would you ever need four and internally the main change we see is with the front section so we've removed the restriction for the front airflow not only for the front panel but for the actual frame itself and that next barrier of having those hard drive caddies that you could remove potentially to allow for larger graphics cards clearance and also allow that unrestricted front intake and so the biggest shift has come in terms of airflow so this case does not support a 240mm radiator whereas now that's kind of like the default configuration for any case that comes out if it does not support the 240 rod then what are you doing now air flow in this case is not good my CPU was throttling it like 94 degrees Celsius and even opening the front panel didn't help much but we were throttling less perhaps the most surprising thing for me was the whole cable management situation that I was not expecting to be that good so all the rubber grommets for example are spaced out well the only thing is they're quite small so you can't fit that many cables comfortably through and the rubber grommet kind of falls out for example the power supply area that rubber grommet is quite small however at the back we have all the necessary cable tie points to route your cables just perfectly fine and we even have a small lip you know at the very bottom so you can tuck your cables there and close the panel without any issues and if you want to install the module drive back inside the case it would not interfere with my 10 a half inch GPU which is awesome the CPU cut out above the motherboard is properly located and it's large enough to pass your cable through some cases now don't even have this now what's interesting about the cable tie points they are a bit smaller in size so it potentially cannot pass multiple cable ties through it whereas now it's slightly longer and gives you a little bit more mobility when you do the cable management but one more thing that surprised me was the inclusion of this little plastic clip that allows you to install the motherboard standoffs something that you know 90% of cases today don't include by the case from 2011 did and to tie this whole experience of like working with something for 2011 I want to reflect as to where we are heading in terms of case design so first visual aspects it's awesome that we're constantly seeing new case designs but it's weird that with the inclusion of tempered glass and all the you know a squared off corners everything kind of looks the same and I'm wondering if we'll ever revert back to something like this I want to see more specialized cases because right now every single interior can accommodate for absolutely any type of hardware but imagine if we are as a user kind of like our channel into a particular build scenario I think that would benefit the market right now because everything kind of is same and I definitely want to see the next chapter of progression in terms of case designs to be focused on cable management so with cases like the H 500 P all the little plating behind the motherboard tray allows the case to look so unique and you don't even have to install the side panel to kind of cover up all the scavo's because the plating and all the low sections are already covered and then we have the new H series from NZXT that allows you to channel cables without much effort because we have those little plastic guides and makes the organization a lot easier and so hopefully in six to seven years we'll be looking at cases that were launched you know this year and laugh about their stupid design decisions and weird frame structural things internally and see how the case market has evolved and so I would love for you to share your earliest case experience like working inside something old like this and how does that contrast to you know how we work with cases and systems today I hope you enjoyed this video make sure to subscribe and check out this other relevant content and we'll see you in the next video