Introduction
| Quick Look | |
| Chenbro Xpider II | The Good |
 |
+ One 120mm LED case fan, one 92mm + 350W Power Supply + Removable 3-1/2" drive bay + Tool-less side and front panel |
| The Bad | |
| - No removable motherboard tray - Not completely tool-less design - Limited HDD bays |
|
Chenbro is a 20-year-old name in the computer case industry. It has been manufacturing PC, server and rackmount cases since then and has a few other things on its list of achievements. Chenbro was the first to bring the tower case design to the market and they also claim to have implemented the first removable motherboard tray.
Along with those great feats, Chenbro has many other things under its belt such as about 180 mechanical design patents, and with over 700 employees across the world, Chenbro is one of the biggest manufacturing companies in the world.
With 20 years of experience, we thought Chenbro had plenty of time to realize the best and worst in PC case design. They have released a few gaming chassis in the past few years, which we have not had the pleasure to look at until now.
Chenbro was kind enough to send us a sample of their Xpider II, which has been out on the market for a while now. With all cases, we took the Xpider II apart to see what makes it stand out from the rest. Take a look at what we found.
More information is available on the Xpider II at Chenbro's website.
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33 Comments
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Staples - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link
Very ugly design. It certainly will not be my next case.kmmatney - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link
Can't say that I've ever found a removable motherboard tray very useful. Just gives more parts to rattle and weakens the structure. You certainly don't need it to swap out components.shuttleboi - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link
Do Anandtech reviewers have a problem with aesthetics or something? Why do they keep reviewing these really butt-ugly cases? How about something (e.g. from Lian-Li or Coolermaster) that isn't completely repulsive?Budman - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link
" We test it with all the same PSU so that the noise comparisons are all the same.Kristopher "
that may be good for mobo/cpu tests but you're reviewing a CASE,you just cant pick & chose the parts you like.
The case should be reviewed as is just like anybody who's going to go buy it,not everybody's going to have a spare psu handy.
And just like the other guy said it's a freaking Fortron 350 watter great psu.
very bad ideal to swap out the psu,when you buy it will it come with that other psu? NO . so if you're going to review do it as it will come from the store.
Sonic587 - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link
"Installation of all components took no more than 15 minutes and since the Chenbro threw in a 350W power supply, a few minutes were shaved off that total installation time. We did swap out that power supply with our own test bed unit, the OCZ 520W PowerStream, for our benchmarks."Excuse me if I missed something, and ignore this if I did, but they just "threw in" a 350W power supply? That's a Fortron FSP350-60PN. A very high quality PSU that could handle almost any system out there today. I think there should be some credit to Chenbro for choosing a quality component that is so often ignored.
That said, I agree it is 110% fugly.
BUBKA - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link
I heard it was optimized to play spiderman 2 and benches 3% fasterKristopherKubicki - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link
We test it with all the same PSU so that the noise comparisons are all the same.Kristopher
Degrador - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link
Yep, I'm with #1. Fugly.Monkeydonutstick - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link
Super StupidBudman - Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - link
Why in the hell would you go to all the trouble of reviewing a case but then swap out the PSU???You should have tested it with the PSU it came with.