External Blueprint

Cubitek uses a clean and minimalistic design for all its Water ice cases. Equally previously noted, the HPTX-Ice measures 559mm (22") tall, 613mm (24") long and 230mm (9") wide, and weighs xix.6lbs (8.9kg) when empty, which is surprisingly light for its dimensions.

In front end, it has a sleek brushed black aluminum bezel with a large fan grill and five 5.25" drive bays. While front panel connectivity is found on top of the instance, ability and reset buttons forth with activity lights are up front. I/O includes two USB 2.0 and USB three.0 ports along with headphone and mic jacks. Besides on the top of the HPTX-ICE are two fan grills similar to the grill on the forepart.

The five.25" drive bay covers look great, simply almost every fourth dimension I grabbed the example to move it effectually they would press in, often falling inside. This introduced another annoying aspect of the HPTX-ICE: you have to remove four screws per door.

While virtually instance doors feature clips every few inches effectually the perimeter to ensure a tight fit, the HPTX-Water ice simply relies on one spiral per corner. This is annoying in and of itself, simply it'southward more than than but an inconvenience.

Once hardware is installed, cables pressing fifty-fifty gently on the door cause it to buckle outwards. This leaves the HPTX-Water ice looking unattractive and we spent quite a lot of time trying to tuck the cables away to avert this issue. The doors are bland with no distinguishable features, though they blend into the design well -- if you tin can get them to sit down flush, that is.

We also dislike Cubitek'southward use of four popular rivots to connect the dorsum panel to the panel that covers the top and front of the chassis. This isn't necessarily bad, merely the panels don't marshal correctly, giving the impression of poor adroitness.

Nevertheless, the back is quite clean with a polished aluminum insert that houses the motherboard'south I/O panel, a rear fan, water cooling holes and 10 expansion brackets. At the bottom is a bracket for an ATX power supply.

Overall, the HPTX-Ice's external pattern isn't bad, it merely lacks refinement as noted with how the doors and panels attach. Given the example'south size and toll, Cubitek had room to come up up with a more intelligent means of accomplishing both.