Hardware Sharkoon Rebel9 Aluminum Case Review

Is Sharkoon's new black box more rebel without a cause than rebel alliance?

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cases/2010/06/20/sharkoon-rebel-9-case-review/1

 

Shame, I saw this on their website a few weeks ago and thought it would make a nice budget case, unfortunately the pricing is just too high. As you have said its among some stiff competition in that price range.

 

Shame indeed! I'd reckon that the NZXT Adamas is around this price range, and that one is full 3mm aluminium.

Is the price of aluminium rising drastically, or are manufacturers just increasingly wanting to rip customers off?

 

Im sorry but if you're going to market a case as a 'sharkoon Rebel 9 aluminium case' then it should be all alu imo. The name is misleading , when i first saw it on their site i must say i thought it could be a great all alu case.

Epic fail imo.

 

It's called marketing.

 

I too saw this case and thought it looked too cheap to be all aluminium. I couldn't find any reviews, or indeed anything other than the Sharkoon marketing, to be able to find out more. This review has confirmed my suspicions although I was kind of hoping for better.

One thing - the case performed so badly in the cooling test because there was only one (intake) fan. I understand and agree with the BT policy of testing cases as they come but surely common sense dictates that a case with no exhaust fan isn't worth testing with passively cooled hardware - it is sort of a waste of time isn't it?

Surely no one with any hint of a brain would expect to run this case with only the single fan in the front? Could you have switched the supplied fan to be a rear exhaust at least?

Just my thoughts, it doesn't change the poor construction quality.

Edit: this isn't a criticism of the review, just an observation that if Sharkoon had shipped BT the case with the single fan in the rear instead of the front it might have peformed averagely instead of woefully.

 

This case makes me want the Thermaltake Level 10 mini even more.

 

Me finks it's fugly

 

I've got a bunch of marketing text books that says its not.

 

Its not though its just a complete lie, Ok in the pdf on the site, it states 'a huge alu faceplate' or something similar, but nowhere does it say that its a steel case with JUST an alu front.

 

Its tough when we're testing cases, there are so many variables in terms of number of fans, where they are placed and if they are push or pull, that the fairest and simplest thing to do is to test the cases as they come.

If we start moving fans around we open ourselves up to all sorts of debates about what the best fan configuration is, we also think that part of the process of designing a case is choosing where to mount the bundled fans. Manufacturers have to make sensible design choices about where to place their fan mounts, they should also have to make sensible choices when it comes to where to mount their fans.

At the end of the day the manufacturers know that this is how we test when they send their products to us.

Also while using the single fan as an exhaust may be common sense to you it many not be that way for all of our readers.

 

I agree with your stance otherwise you would spend all your time rebuilding cases rather than testing them. As my edit states, it is not a criticism of the review.

It just doesn't make sense to me, I think Sharkoon stuffed up here a bit by supplying the case with the fan in the front. What happens if a noob buys it and doesn't put a rear fan in? The thing will overheat.

 

Thanks, I wasn't trying to rebuff a perceived criticism, just kinda explaining why we do it the way we do, apologies if I came off as defensive.

We've actually been talking about revising our case testing procedure as we'd like to do another case group test for the mag with more up to date kit. Its just a minefield of variables but hopefully we can get it ironed out.

 

No worries, I wasn't taking it that way, I was just concerned that my first post sounded negative of BT rather than Sharkoon or the case.

Talking of case testing procedures, have you seen the youtube video of Silverstone testing the FT01 with a smoke machine to demonstrate positive air pressure? An idea for bit-tech?

Seriously though, a thermal photograph showing where the heat spots are in a case when under CPU and/or GPU load would graphically demonstrate thermal performance - I wonder if that can be done easily and cheaply?

 

I'm glad i bought the R2.

 

Did you put in extra fans

 

It doesn't look too bad to me, hopefully it comes with a ton of 5.25" to 3.5" converters

 

This has me confused - did you test the case with a conventional CPU cooler with a fan or just the passive one?

I think they did this a while back in CPC, they had to borrow the thermal camera from somewhere and it wasn't cheap!

 

Yeah, they cost £50k, I have been chatting about it in another thread so as to not hijack this one

 

Looking at this am liking the watercooling solution. Would this setup be the best for a HD5870 or would anyone recoomend a different solution?