Xilence Interceptor Review
Up Close: Overview, side panel and roof.
Published: 11th July 2012 | Source: XILENCE | Price: £149.99 |
Up Close: Overview
I think it's fair ti say the Interceptor sports quite a rugged look, somewhat reminiscent of the HAF series of cases. As with a great many cases today the roof and front panels are made of a moulded heavy duty plastic. I spent quite a while trying to work out exactly what it was that the edges of the case reminded of exactly before it hit me that they were bringing to my mind the chunky tyre treads you get on off road "mud Plugger" tyres. The case is entirely deep black, with the exception of a red trim which runs across the top edge of each side panel.
Side Panel
The left hand side of the case is dominated by a large mesh area, which stands proud of the rest of the side panel by a good 10mm. The upper part of this mesh area is given over to what is very possibly the smallest case window i've ever seen. More of a letter box than a window to be honest, and i'm hard pushed to think what the point of it is. The thin sliver of a view it affords into the case seems hardly worthwhile. What does appear more worthwhile is the inclusion of a selection of fan mounting options on the interior of the side panel. Should you choose you can mount either 2x120mm, 2x140mm or a single 230mm, but bear in mind none of these are included. To keep your internals dust free, Xilence have also fitted an easily removable washable filter.
Roof
The very front of the roof area of the case is where we find our front I/O area. A brace of USB2 ports are joined by a single USB3 port, alongside them lies the power and reset buttons and on the far right hand side the mic/phono jack plug sockets. Situated just off the main control panel area to the right lies a small slider switch which is used to alter the air extract vents. Plenty of room here for a fan controller but sadly there isn't one.
As mentioned above, the roof of the case has variable geometry vents. These can be opened and closed so as to allow more, or less air to escape from the case. From a design point of view they're a nice touch as they do allow you to alter the aesthetics of the case. However from a practical standpoint i'm not entirely sure why you'd want to let less hot air out of a case. I thought perhaps closing them might lessen the perceived noise of fans etc which exists in pretty much any case, but experiments with this proved that having them opened or closed made no discernible difference to noise levels, but did have an impact on the temp inside the case by raising it 5-6 degrees. Not much you might say, but these few degrees may be just the few degrees that keep your CPU or GPU temp just this side of acceptable. The image below left shows the vents closed and the image on the right has them open. not really much difference, with just the addition of serrations allowing a fraction more air to escape.
Most Recent Comments
what about a review fot the interceptor pro case?
|
Originally Posted by Ru5ty_t00l
good review.
what about a review fot the interceptor pro case? |
a HAF Switch...
airdeano
|
Originally Posted by airdeano
kinda looks like if the HAF X and the Switch had a baby.. this is what you'd get.
a HAF Switch... airdeano |
I think it would need much uglier parents than that.....
Looks like it fell out of the ugly tree imho.
to me it looks a bit cheap to be honest
i like the red accents, tho
|
Originally Posted by tinytomlogan
I think it would need much uglier parents than that.....
Looks like it fell out of the ugly tree imho. |
LOL!!
airdeano
PS, too bad you dont have a second channel and tons of extra time to make an "unknown"
video of zero use PC products. rip and screw the bullet pointed ideas of the
product and evaluate the "crash" factor of how it performs from a 5-story roof
top to the ground!
CSS Valid
With rugged looks and a capacious interior able to accept HPTX motherboards, lets see if the Xilence interceptor has what it takes to make the OC3D "A" list
Continue Reading