MGE Viper: Another Xtreme Gamer Creation

External Design

The visual design of a chassis can be simple yet elegant or extremely detailed and heavily modified from the factory. No matter what the case is, personal preference plays a large role in whether the case will be accepted by each individual user. Many prefer that we review cases based solely on how they look instead of looking inside to the guts of a product to see how they perform. We ourselves at AnandTech have our own opinions when it comes to the looks of certain products, but we try to go deeper into it to see what makes the case worth investing in or else, what changes can be made in future models.

MGE's XGbox line of gaming cases takes their reference designs and adds custom-molded bezels and custom-designed side windowed panels to give consumers various options from which to choose.

The Viper's front bezel is a custom-designed piece made of plastic that features a two-color combination of, in this test case, red and black. MGE carries on these colors throughout the chassis and we will seldom see a section of unpainted metal. At the top of the bezel, we noticed the sinister Viper logo, which is red on black at the center on the horizontal. The logo will light up when the system is powered.

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Towards the bottom of the bezel, we see a large rectangular LCD temperature display, which features a system up-time counter, an animated Viper logo, and a single temperature readout. The temperature lead can be attached to any component, but we prefer to attach it to the CPU, since it is the most critical component. We would have liked to see a full-featured temperature display, which could keep tabs on more than just a single component to get a better idea of how each piece of hardware is performing in the area of heat dissipation.
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Below the LCD display is a grill that allows air to be pulled in. We hope to see an air filter to keep dust and debris from entering the chassis.

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