Installation

Our Armor case is going to sport some of the latest hardware on the market. While we wanted to review the case showing a water cooled system to show the ease of installation using the water cooled friendly case, I didn't have time to secure a kit in the time frame alotted. So we can present this review with the following configuration:

• AMD Athlon64 3500+ Winchester core
• DFI nF4 SLI-DR 939 motherboard
• 2x Gainward GeForce 6600 GT GS GLH SLI
• 1024MB Corsair 2-2-2-5 XPERT DDR400
• Thermaltake PurePower TWV480 Total Watts Viewer
• 1x 120GB Maxtor Diamond Max 9 SATA 8MB
• LG GSA-4163B 16X Super-Multi Internal DVD Rewriter

The case panel is clearily marked to show the mounting pattern of a specific standard, this case is BTX and ATX ready, capable of handling many different mother-boards. The letter A repesents the ATX pattern which we are going to use. You simply place a brass motherboard stand-off at every place marked with "A" and you will effectively install them without guess work.

Now that I got the brass motherboard stand-offs in place, I can now un-screw and take out the generic I/O plate and replace it with the one that is supplied by our mother-board manufacturer so I can proceed with installation.

Installing the motherboard was fast and painless, I just lined up the I/O panel to the motherboard and fastened it with the included screws. Done deal! Now I can install our ram as shown below.

We removed the HDD case and the fans to give you a view of what's under it all. Again the design and location of the PSU is a welcome change. Putting the PSU on it's side allows for extra space giving the Armor a second HDD cage for another set of three 3.5" devices, giving expandability a new name!

With the mother-board secure, I am going to start the PSU installation. The unique design of the Armor puts the PSU orientation on it's side. I like this configuration myself, it puts the wires close to the side panel allowing you to easily conceal the cables for a cluter free environment.

PurePower TWV480 Total Watts Viewer

Our installation is going to include a Purepower TWV480 Total Watts Viewer PSU which is sold seperately. The TWV480 is more than ample power for today's SLI systems. While everyone is screaming power, the real world results are that these systems pull a lot less power than the average user is reading about. While the theory bigger is better applies in some cases, that just does not apply from configuration to configuration. Our system is using a healthy AMD Althon64 3500+ CPU and two Gainward GeForce 6600 GT GS GLH in SLI mode. According to this setup our system uses less than 100watts at idle and approximately 200watts under benchmarking, so this power supply is very sufficient for our rig. With smooth, stable, reliable power and pre-installed sleeves for a ultra clean look, this PSU rocks!

This kick ass PSU has a 5.25" front panel LED for instant viewing of consumed watts in real time, complete with sleeved cables, serial ATA ready, Active PFC, fan speed control, long life, low noise, low ripple, clean power, who could ask for anything more. This PSU will handle any SLI rig or configuration that you can through at it.

Installing the PSU is cakewalk, you simply install the PSU from the inside of the case. The chassis design allows a true slide in fit. The tiny rails guide the PSU into its home base and then you just screw the four common screws that are supplied with the Armor and presto, one easily installed PSU. I will you show you the front panel later on in the review.

Now that the PSU and our XPERT ram is installed and we will now install the DVD drive. In the shot to the upper left you can see the four knock out holes, those are for adding an external radiator or reservoir allowing you to pass-thru the chassis by simply removing the desired knock out panel. This is one of the reasons Armor is a water-cooling friendly case.