Casecom KM-6788 Review by Pob

[Fortune117]

Umm the whole front of the case is a filter, granted I think it'll be a pig to clean, but it's still a filter.
The one rear that to me is missing a filter is the PSU vent on the bottom.

Ok that side panel vent is not great, as intake fans there will be filterless, and without fans air is probably going to get sucked in there as it'll be an eaiser flow route than the front. (air is like water and will generally follow the path of least resistance)
However I'm thinking of cutting it out to turn it into a window

How do you turn the side into a window? Im looking to do this with mine.

[Behemoth]

Actually, for a cheap case I was expecting it to be more coke can construction than that. For the money I'm quite impressed. Certainly does look pretty good for a budget case.

It could almost be termed as a poor mans antec 300. May be doing a new build for someone in the next month or two, I'll give this one some serious consideration.

I'd like to see some pics of it fully loaded up with a system in, just to see how much room there is to work with later on when changing a graphics card over for example.

Nice review there Pob, keep up the good work

[Fortune117]

Only problem I have with this case is that the front fan is too loud :/ Other than that it is an excellent case and I would reccomend a buy

[Behemoth]

Only problem I have with this case is that the front fan is too loud :/ Other than that it is an excellent case and I would reccomend a buy

Not exactly a big job to replace that with something else thats quieter Done that many times with cases like this where the supplied fans are louder than my hoover.

[arthurleung]

Although the case does look tempting, I ended up going for the P180 mini (£48.76 on SCAN yesterday). I know its almost twice the price but it ticks all your boxes apart from being white!

[Pob255]

Not exactly a big job to replace that with something else thats quieter Done that many times with cases like this where the supplied fans are louder than my hoover.

Actually if you read through my review, while it's not what I'd call a "big job" it does require some creative thinking and it's not as stright forward as most cases.
This is because the front fan uses non-standard screws for this non-standard fan, basically you need to get some new screws somehow (they are not any normal case screws so you cannot scavange them from someware else) or come up with some other methord to mount the fan.

The screw holes in the case are too small for normal case fan screws or rubber fan plugs to fit and they are too large for normal case screws.

What I did was my old cut up Hair band trick to mount a new front fan, I've tested out my heavy weight ThermalTake Cyclo fan and it hold in nicely with hair bands.

To mount a fan in the fron of his M59 (which is the same) Ulti used twist ties.
http://forums.hexus.net/chassis-syst...ml#post1837555

As to the fan it comes with, it's ok, not amazing but decent enough, almost all the noise is from motor & baring
It's one of the fans I looked at in my mini round up
http://forums.hexus.net/chassis-syst...-round-up.html

It moves more air than an Antec tri-cool on low but is also more noisey
It's still less noise than a tri-cool on medium, also less air flow, however it's only keeping hard drives cool and that doesn't need much air flow.

Although the case does look tempting, I ended up going for the P180 mini (£48.76 on SCAN yesterday). I know its almost twice the price but it ticks all your boxes apart from being white!

For an mATX case the mini p180 is great and for that price well worth it I'm planning a full ATX motherboard i5 system into this so the mini P180 is a no go.
However I think this case will have a hard job swaying me from my current p180

[arthurleung]

Normally if anything doesn't fit in the screw hole I put cable tie through it.

Too bad the full sized P180 is getting so expensive now I might as well get a mATX board instead of full one. Don't see the point of a case over a hundred quids that is not even Aluminium.

And nowadays having mATX instead of ATX doesn't seems to have much effect on overclocking anyway.

Love my P180 apart from it weight like 25kg fully loaded.

[JOEPINEAPPLES]

My first build and Ive come up against a problem (Well I think it is) On the panel connectors on my MB (M4A77TD PRO) there seem to be room for 4 pin connectors........the front panel on this case only has 2 pin.........can someone please help and let me know which pins to connect these too.

Other than that Im just waiting for my copy of Windows7 which (weather permitting) will be delivered tomorrow.

THanks in advance.

[Phage]

I think you might want to get this moved to the Hardware or Help section.
Mods ?

[scaryjim]

This case better be as good as you reckon Pob, I've just ordered one to put a mate's new build into

[scaryjim]

OK, just built the aforementioned mate's computer

And I have to say that for £25 the KM6788 was pretty damn good: but if you're here I assume you're read Pob's review so I won't do a full one!

I will highlight a couple of areas where I felt it had problems though:

For my mobo (ASUS M3A78-T) it could've done with a cable routing hole at the top rear of the motherboard tray for the ATX 12v connector: this lack meant I had to route that wire on top of the motherboard, *under* the graphics card, and it looks a bit messy.

It could also do with about 1cm extra space between the underneath of the mobo tray and the side panel: at one point I thought I was going to be able to route my main power cable behind the tray, but it would've obstructed the side panel too much

And those hard drive bay rails: Lovely idea, but for some reason designed so that I had to slide my WD Caviar Blue in *backwards*!!! That may be intentional to make cable management easier, it may be an unusual positioning of screw holes on my drives, but it means that if my mate ever needs to take his HD out he'll have to remove both side panels and pull the cables before he can get it out. A bit odd...

Other than that though, it was a great case to build into, and where the cable management did work it made life so much easier. I also particularly like the tool-less clips for the optical drive - they *just work* and are so simple; definitely a feature I'd like to see on more cases. So overall I was pretty impressed with it, particularly at such a low price

[Pob255]

For my mobo (ASUS M3A78-T) it could've done with a cable routing hole at the top rear of the motherboard tray for the ATX 12v connector: this lack meant I had to route that wire on top of the motherboard, *under* the graphics card, and it looks a bit messy.

Ummmm

*reads back*

Opps I forgot to mention that

[Ulti]

OK, just built the aforementioned mate's computer

And I have to say that for £25 the KM6788 was pretty damn good: but if you're here I assume you're read Pob's review so I won't do a full one!

I will highlight a couple of areas where I felt it had problems though:

For my mobo (ASUS M3A78-T) it could've done with a cable routing hole at the top rear of the motherboard tray for the ATX 12v connector: this lack meant I had to route that wire on top of the motherboard, *under* the graphics card, and it looks a bit messy.

It could also do with about 1cm extra space between the underneath of the mobo tray and the side panel: at one point I thought I was going to be able to route my main power cable behind the tray, but it would've obstructed the side panel too much

And those hard drive bay rails: Lovely idea, but for some reason designed so that I had to slide my WD Caviar Blue in *backwards*!!! That may be intentional to make cable management easier, it may be an unusual positioning of screw holes on my drives, but it means that if my mate ever needs to take his HD out he'll have to remove both side panels and pull the cables before he can get it out. A bit odd...

Sounds really similar to the NZXT M59, I have my 8 pin 12V connector slotted under the little hole next to the PCI-E slot under the graphics card too, slightly messy I have to say.

The NZXT M59 has a bit of space for the 24 pin 12V connector luckily though, but you have to kind of force the side panel on, I found a lil trick to get it on easily though - too hard to explain though but it's basically that the M59 side panel has a little hinge thing so I gotta push the wires slightly above it so they don't get caught when putting on the side panel.

I've never had problems with putting the HDD with the back end in first, as I use the lowest bay I can fit my hand in, pull the cables out from the back and pull the HDD out. I'm sure this pretty much applies to the Casecom case too.

[scaryjim]

Opps I forgot to mention that

lol - not sure why you would've

I've never had problems with putting the HDD with the back end in first, as I use the lowest bay I can fit my hand in, pull the cables out from the back and pull the HDD out. I'm sure this pretty much applies to the Casecom case too.

Yeah, I guess you probably could do that. Just seems like a bit of a pain, tbh. All the sideways drive bays I've come across have been set up the other way round, and it seems intuitive to me that you'd always take off the same side panel to get to the cables whether it's the ones on the motherboard or the ones on the drive!

In the end I think it worked out better that way anyway because it was quite tight stretching the SATA power connectors from my optical drive (highest 5.25" bay) to the hard drive (middle HD bay) - if the HD had been in the other way round I'm not sure it would've fitted. But that's more an issue with the PSU (OCZ Stealth XStream) having 3 peripheral leads only one of which has SATA connectors on it!!!

[Pob255]

Of all the cases that are made by this OEM only the Akasa Freedom Xone and NZXT Beta EVO seem to have a cutout for the EPS/ATX+12v cable.

I'm going to have to mod it well when the weather gets warmer.

[scaryjim]

I'm going to have to mod it

Not a bad idea. I considered it for this one but then realised that he's not that much of a mate

On the plus side, my Mrs gave me permission to buy one of these for myself: although I think I'm going to try a bit of modding first and then buy one if the mod goes horribly wrong