Logisys CS888UV: Glowing Acrylic!

External Design

Acrylic cases are similar in design to their metal counterparts. Starting with the front bezel, we notice that the top half of the CS888UV is made up of four 5-1/4" drive bay covers, all clear to match the acrylic construction of the case. The drive bay covers are secured to the case's bezel by a pair of flathead screws on either side. The same goes for the smaller 3-1/2" drive bay covers directly below.

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The bottom one-third of the CS888UV's bezel consists of a custom-designed fan grill, which looks great, but doesn't seem to be one that could protect the fan from any foreign objects. There is enough space to insert a pen or some other object that could jam the fan.

Note: This design is not ideal for users who have small children.
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To the right of the fan grill is the power and reset buttons. The power button is sized adequately with the power logo displayed on it. The reset button sits directly below the power button and is, of course, smaller to reduce the risk of it being pressed at inconvenient times, for example, when playing a video game, or encoding that family video. Below the buttons are the power and HDD activity lights, which, as we will explain later, provide the only luminance during power on.

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At the bottom of the front bezel are the audio and USB ports. The audio ports are positioned on either side of the vertically stacked dual USB ports. For some reason, there isn't a FireWire port implemented in the design, which doesn't really turn us off - but, since almost all other cases do, it does take some points away from the functionality of the CS888UV.

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The left side panel is composed of dual fans positioned on the inside of the panel. These fans have the standard circular grills, unlike that on the front bezel, which protect them more effectively. This panel can be removed by removing a total of 10 screws. This is extremely tedious if we need to replace hardware more often than not. Logisys could have effectively reduced the number of screws needed to hold the CS888UV together by planning out the most efficient place to position the points. Hopefully, Logisys will take this into consideration in future designs.