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Chieftec Dragon Series Aluminum
Date: Wednesday, May 27, 2003
Author: Joe Di Figlia
Provided By: None
Page: 2 of 3
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The drive rails slide in and out of the bays without any trouble, and the retention strength on them is fine so you don't have to worry about wearing them out and/or your drives sliding out during travel (you gamers). The drive cage for the 5.25" bays is constructed of nice thick aluminum and lacks any sharp edges.
As we work our way down the front portion of the case, we are greeted by two removable 3.5" racks each holding up to 3 devices. The upper most of the 2 racks consists of the 2 exposed drives. These racks are easily removed, except when using a large video card such as an Nvidia Ti or higher based card whereas removal can get tricky to add and remove your internal hard drives.
I have noticed a flaw with these removable racks. If you look closely, the release mechanism (lever) actually rubs against the side panel of your case, enough to possibly make some marks and become and annoyance (for me only so far). This issue could have been easily solved by the manufacture by simple shaving the levers back a little bit.
In the back of the lower most rack (shown in the picture below) is a spot for a cooling fan, which mounts in a plastic retainer. This is a fantastic thing to have blowing on your precious data, remember a cool device is a longer lasting device. Directly below the 3.5" racks is a spot for another intake fan.
Unfortunately both spots were not populated with fans from the manufacturer. Fans do, however, mount very easily in the case and are even more easily removed, for those of us who enjoy mixing things around in our experiments, by means of a plastic removable fan housing. I have to admit, this has made things much easier to change around in the case, and it also helps from scratching and marking your case with screws and screwdrivers. The only complaint I have about these retainers is the fact that they do not accept fans with a larger depth than 25mm.
The side panel is host to a window that is made of thin plexi and is held in place by plastic pushpin retainers. These are the same kind of plastic fasteners that many people use to mount their internal cooling fans. If you ask me, this is the BEST feature of this case because if you scratch the hell out of your window, which I do on all my cases, you can easily replace it.
The side panel also features an easy latching handle mechanism so you don't have to meddle with screws to remove it and work inside your case. This is a welcome feature for those of us who are always in our cases. If security is your thing (or you have kids that like playing with screwdrivers) you can LOCK it with the provided keys (same key for front panel). One thing to note about the door, after removing it quite a few times, I noticed the paint on the case started to chip away. It is a tight fit for the side door and there is some definite rubbing one needs to be aware of if keeping the case looking like new is a priority.
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