Introduction

Having the greatest parts in a computer doesn’t mean you have the best computer, it simply means that it will perform the best. The new age of computer design dawns on us with the introduction of the Dell WebPC, eMachines, eOne, the Intel pyramid computer, and many other space aged designs for computers. As we are hit by the creativity of the computer industry and our desires to have one of those machines on our desktop, we realize that all of these computers are prebuilt by companies that otherwise make big bland computers. Most people that will read this review will by using their own machines, one that they have built, and one that doesn’t look like a WebPC or an iMac. So what options do we homebuilt computer owners have? Well, 1) we want a colorful computer that stands out from the rest and 2) we want to use our own parts and 3) we don’t want proprietary hardware and software inside. That leaves us with the option of purchasing a case for your parts that has flare and eye-catching designs that big corporations have.

The case in a computer is often overlooked and under appreciated. The case is what holds all your components together and a case is a prime factor in keeping those components cool. Of course you don’t need a case, no one needs a case but who would want a computer without a case? Sprawling out the parts of a computer on the top of your desk is neither appealing nor efficient. Many computer owners take for granted all of the features that a case has the makes the computing experience better. Basically, there are two types of cases… generic and cool cases. Generic cases can be found at almost any computer store, including some large chains such as CompUSA and some mom and pop shops like “Dan’s Parts”. Generic cases are often built without the care and precision, not to mention quality materials, of a good case. They are made with flimsy parts that break often, they are heavy, and usually, there is no tech support for it. Good cases on the other hand, have a good brand name such as Antec or Enlight, are made from aluminum and high grade plastic, has great circulation and it’s construction allows it to dissipate heat more efficiently than other cases. There are many reasons to choose the good cases over generic ones. Just to name a few, some cases keep the temperature generated from the parts of a computer lower than others, making it a cooler case (pun intended). Also, good cases are not as loud as cheap ones; they usually retain a lot of the noise from fans and hard drives.

As you might have noticed, SystemLogic has just finished a very large case review and it went into detail the good and bad of cases and there is no need for me to restate what was already said in the past review so I will just let you move right onto my review and for those of you aching to know more about cases, you should check out LiteOn FS020 Case review at

http://www.systemlogic.net/reviews/hardware/cases/liteon/fs020

As most of you might have already guessed by the title and introduction of this review that it will talk about the Yuri from Colorcase, a company that can be expected by the name, to sell cases designed to put some color and life into the PC case industry. Although the idea is great, the market that Colorcase hopes to appeal to is a niche market and it is risky to be selling to such a small crowd of computer enthusiasts who make their own computers and wish for colored cases. But as we seen in the past, a small market can become incredibly big and powerful. The cases that Colorcase produces are very well designed and there is a huge selection to choose from on their website at http://www.colorcase.com.

As you look through the products that Colorcase offers, you can see that there is a similarity in construction in all of the cases but the designs are distinctly different. It is a good idea to keep the basic case construction and apply different “personalities” to the case to make it different, saving on costs of designing and construction. The “Yuri” case in particular is the one we received to review and it has all of the bells and whistles you can expect from most high-end cases. The first thing to note about the Yuri is that it is translucent, just like computers from Apple and eMachines but it beats them in overall design and quality of construction. The translucent plastic is high grade is hard to break, it’s also worth mentioning that unlike other cases, this one feels very solid, not creaking or bending in any place. Colorcase stresses that this case is made of aluminum for very good reason. Basically, the entire case is made of aluminum and surrounded with the plastic on the outside, making this a very light case. Aluminum is significantly lighter than other metals such as iron or steel while retaining strength and sturdiness. Also, another reason that this case is made of aluminum is because of shipping costs. If anyone has ever seen a priority mail bill for shipping a case across the U.S., they’d think it’s outrageous. The high costs of shipping cases, especially in quantity is because of their massive weight; making the entire case out of a light metal is a good idea for reducing shipping costs. The benefits of a lighter case was apparent when I first picked up the package, it was lighter than any case I lifted before and it was easy for me to carry it up 2 flights of stairs (now carrying the case, fully filled to a LAN party is a different story). The Yuri weighs in at just 6 pounds (2.6 kg) without a power supply. Looking at the case, it seems bigger than other cases and that is partly true, the added plastic makes it look thicker and the design on the front of the case gave me the illusion of the case being wider on the bottom than it is on the top.

Features

• ATX Mid-Tower
• Comes with 3 Different Types of ATX I/O Shields (Back Plates)
• World's First Aluminum Case with the Lightest Weight
• ONLY 6 LB Weight Without Power Supply
• Made of Pure Aluminum (Interior)
• Heat Absorbing Property
• Absolutely Tool-less (Side Panel Opens Up)
• Easy To Install the Motherboard
• Artistic Design
• Built-in Extra Fan in the Front
• Hand-Cutting Free
• Dimension: 7 7/8" X 17 1/4" X 18 1/8"
• Three External 5.25" Drive Bays
• Two External 3.5" Drive Bays
• Two Internal 3.5" X 2 Hard Disk Bays (Removable Hard Disk Rack)
• 7 slots
• Recommend For Those Seeking the Best Case Possible in the Market
• Guaranteed For Its Quality Craftsmanship
• Hand Finished Touch

Two side panels come off easily when two tabs behind the case is depressed. The side panels will slide back a couple of inches and then all you have to do is lift up the panel, exposing the interior of the case. Reattachment of the case is the same, just in reverse. The right panel of the case will not be used much because the left panel exposes the entire case. The left panel is plated on the inside with a tin layer of aluminum to shield users from electromagnetic interference.

The front bezel of the computer has 3 5.25” openings, 1 3.5” and 1 made just for the floppy drive. This is a good touch to make the case more appealing to the eye, hiding most of the ugly floppy drive. The proprietary slot for the floppy should fit most modern floppy drives. It will not fit with zip drives, orb drives, and others like those. The other notable features of the front are 2 buttons, one large power button and one smaller reset button below it. There are only two lights on this case; the power and the hard drive light. Removing the front plate of the case wasn’t easy, as you had to press on 4 tabs in the inside of the case to remove it. The good news is that no one really needs to remove the front because all drives should fit through the bezel.

The Yuri came with all necessary screws for hard drive, CD-ROM, and motherboard installation, including a good supply of extra screws in case you lose a couple. The Yuri gives users the standard 7 bays…. 3 5.25” external, 2 3.5” external, and 2 3.5” internal. The internal bays are removable via a screw and a sliding tab inside of the case, allowing for easy hard drive installation. The other drives cannot be taken out of the case, as they are part of the frame. A unique feature to note is that the case only accepts place screws in the left side, so when you are screwing into place a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive, you do not place screws on the right side of the frame, this is why removing the right panel of the case is not necessary. This is both good and bad… good because it doesn’t take as long to install drives as it used to, bad because I noticed the CD-ROM makes the case shake because of the high speed and limited support that it given to the drive with only 2 screws on the left side. One other thing that I noticed about its interior structure was that I didn’t get cut. After I test a case or even open one up just for the heck of it, I get at least a cut. I just opened my other case up to take out a drive and I got cut by the edges on the bottom of the case. With the Yuri, it is not easy to get cut because the sharp edges inherent to other cases are not present here. The edges around the drive bays and the panels are all rounded so you wont get any bad cuts from this case. Also on the inside is a 80mm fan for air intake in the front bottom. Ventilation openings are present in the front bottom of the case and in the back, above the I/O shield space, leaving room for a couple of exhaust fans that should fit well although there are no indications that the case needs them.

Installation

The first thing I noticed about the interior of this case is that it has more room for innards than an obese man’s stomach has for food (literally). The space inside of this case is more than enough to support all of today’s ATX 2.0+ boards, including the Tyan Trinity 400 test board I used. The board conforms to ATX 2.01 specs in which it says a case needs 6 places to screw in a board. The Yuri has those 6 stand offs and it also has a couple more stand off’s included with the extra screws so your board can be more secure than Jane in Tarzan’s arms. The design of the board is great because of the fact that nothing sits above the motherboard, there’s plenty of room to leave your entire board open for tweaking.

The Yuri didn’t come with a power supply, probably to reduce shipping charges, but normally if ordered through them, it comes either a KME 250W (http://www.colorcase.com/products/powersupply/kme250.html), or a Fortron 300W (http://www.colorcase.com/products/powersupply/fsp300.html) which is on AMD’s list of approved power supplies for Athlon processors. To supplement the hole left by missing power supply, I ran on over to CompUSA and picked up a 300W CompUSA brand PS and slapped it into the top of the case. There are no obstructions located inside the case to block the power supply cord to the motherboard’s ATX PS connector.

I mentioned above that the Yuri has pretty good ventilation but how loud is the case when everything is running? The Yuri stays at a whisper 60dB, it could be louder if not for the loud fan on the Alpha heatsink, nevertheless, this just blew me away, the Yuri is the quietest case that SystemLogic has ever reviewed. But lets explain why it is so quiet. Keep in mind that this case has more plastic than it does aluminum, the entire outer level of the case is plated with plastic, giving it a better overall quantity in which to muffle the sounds coming from the components inside.

Testing

The two primary things to test for in cases is the temperature and the noise level and as the noise level was already tested, lets see how hot we can get this case. All testing was done with standard computer configuration of motherboard, processor, ram, video, CD-ROM, and floppy devices.

Testbed:

Tyan Trinity 400 S1854 motherboard

500MHz Celeron (provided by Memory Man) with 3DfxCOOL Alpha cooler

128mb SDRAM (provided by Memory Man)

36X Generic CD-ROM drive

13.6GB Maxtor 7200 RPM Hard drive

3dfx Voodoo3 3000 PCI

Generic Floppy

To test the heat retaining capability of the case, only a case temperature test will be performed, additional test will be performed and results posted as soon as people tell us that they want to see more tests on cases. Email your requests to dave@systemlogic.net.

Case temperature is probably the most important test because a case is supposed to help keep components cool and the heat that all the components generate will come together to heat the case up and that’s what we will measure over a 30 minute period in increments of 5 min. The case is operating on one 80mm intake fan and one 80mm PS fan.

0 min. - 86 degrees F

5 min. - 90 degrees F

10 min. - 94 degrees F

15 min. - 96 degrees F

20 min. - 99 degrees F

25 min - 99 degrees F

30 min. - 99 degrees F

As you can see by the results, the case heated to a comfortable 96 degrees at it’s highest but it will not get much above that. Considering the hot components and the lack of a secondary fan, this case did pretty well in our tests, refusing to break the 100-degree barrier. The airflow inside of the case can be thanked for the great ventilation of air. If a couple of more fans are added, I can guarantee that this case would be a pleasant environment for all of your prized high tech devices.

Pros & Cons

Pros Great Design (translucent, color) Quiet Good ventilation Easy access to side panels Good ventilation No tools required to service High quality aluminum Light (6 lbs.) Quality construction

Cons Expensive Cannot remove drive bays No power supply

Conclusion

Finally, you have reached the end of this review and now it’s time to recap everything I said and put it into a couple of farewell sentences. The Yuri is a case that is designed for the person that wants his computer to look and perform at it’s best. The cooling and the weight of this case are absolutely great and this is the quietest case ever reviewed at SystemLogic. Having the best looking case isn’t necessarily having the best case though but Colorcase adds to it’s design the quality of cases that they have been producing for years now and that quality has made this case one of the best overall cases in terms of design and efficiency. But don’t think this case doesn’t have its flaws. As I mentioned in the above sections, this case only has 2 internal 3.5” drive bays that are removable, if all of the bays were removable, it would mean for easier installation and access. This case can be ordered either online at the Colorcase website at http://www.colorcase.com or through their phone number that’s listed on the site. The Yuri is Colorcase’s most expensive unit, costing $179 for the case with a Fortron 300W power supply and $149 for a generic 250W power supply, that is a steep price to pay for a case but it’s quality and construction makes up for the price tag (to some people). If you are dying for a good-looking computer case that has performance similar to the best in the world, than your best source is Colorcase.

Rating: 9/10 SystemLogistics

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