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I first saw this case at the PC Show in Sydney back in March. It caught my eye not only because of the obvious efforts to improve cooling, but also because I wasn't aware of anyone besides Lian Li making aluminium cases. It turned out to be quite an unusual case with a heap of interesting features.. some more useful than others.
I'm going to avoid (as much as possible) comparing this case directly to Lian Li's offerings because I haven't seen them in great detail myself. We do have a review of their PC-60 here but that was done by Manaz and, while I took the photos for that review, it's been a while since I've seen one up close.
Aluminium cases are funny things - it's hard to quantify any way they are better than conventional steel cases, other than cosmetic that is. Some people say they run cooler but without two identical cases, one in steel and one in aluminium, it's hard to be confident of that. They're certainly lighter which can be an advantage for people who make a habit of lugging their PC's to lan parties, friends houses etc - but once you load them up with HDD's, PSU's and other bits that advantage is lessened. I guess it does boil down to almost pure cosmetic value then - but even that is questionable once you load up the front of your nice silver case with beige CDROM's and DVD-ROM's. Of course, some silver spraypaint can remove that problem (and the warranty on your drives) if you're keen. As a non-scientific test I sometimes ask my girlfriend to look at review items and see what she thinks. A simple "whaddya think of that?" usually gives me an idea of what someone who isn't a jaded old computer nerd like me would think. In this case it was "ooo, that looks cool!" followed by enthusiastic case-side rubbing so obviously, even with beige cdroms, the aesthetic appeal is pretty high for some. :)
It's also easy to say that aluminium cases are flimsy. If you pick up an empty one with the side panels off you could probably do it some serious harm by, say, grabbing a corner in each hand and giving it a mighty twist. More so than you could with a steel case. This isn't really anything to do with quality of construction though - or not in the case of this Sky Hawks one anyway - it's just that aluminium is simply not as strong as steel. I daresay your average steel case will survive being dropped on a corner better than an aluminium one too, even once the sides are on and it's full of goodies trying to hold the insides in place. The fact that they're so light and flexy makes me instinctively think they must be of poor build quality, but this unit sports nicely rolled edges to stop you hacking your fingers off, it has plenty of screws and rivets so no bits move or flap loosely around and it's designed with things to add strength like the long panel between the PSU and the top drive bay. I couldn't really fault the quality of construction - the use of thumbscrews holding the case panels and the cards or backplates in place was a nice touch too.
I was paranoid at first about scratching the nice shiny panels, but the finish is surprisingly tough. It's not a mirror; it's more a brushed aluminium look and it doesn't scratch too easily. Certainly not as easy as it is to scratch the paint off a steel case. It does tend to attract fingerprints though..
I should probably point out that this Sky Hawks unit is not entirely made from aluminium. I understand that some bits can't really be made from aluminium due to strength issues (like motherboard mounts) but there are some bits that I expected to be aluminium, but weren't - like the faceplate. That's right, the faceplate and drivebay covers are normal plastic ones seemingly spraypainted silver - and only on the visible bits. That's no biggie for me as it keeps the complexity and hence price of the case down, but some people will be dissapointed to pop the covers off and discover boring beige plastic behind them. In fact, the faceplate looks remarkably like the Hyena series midtowers that seem to be becoming more popular these days and at first glance I thought this was a modified Hyena. I've got my main machine in one now though and when placed side by side you can see there are some significant differences:
Firstly there's an extra 5.25" bay on the Sky Hawks and the swoopy side bits are further down. Buttons are comparable but oriented differently and overall I guess you could say they share some common styling cues, but my point is that the Sky Hawks does not have a simply resprayed Hyena faceplate. Note also, if you will, the row of faceplate connectors..
These are kinda cool and were another reason why the case initially caught my eye. They connect to a fairly hefty cable which runs back through the case and out via a special backplate before plugging into the existing connectors on your sound card, motherboard etc. It's basically the same idea as the FrontX Multimedia Ports I reviewed here but has more connectors. It's curious that they provide the mouse connector but none for keyboard - however it's certainly useful having the headphones jack and USB ports front-accessible.
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