Hardware Akasa Enigma

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2009/03/17/akasa-enigma-review/1

Today we're taking a look at Akasa's entry into the SFF market with the Enigma Mini-ITX case and finding out if its the ideal home for an Intel Atom based system or media centre.Do good things really come in small packages?

 

Wasn't this originally the recommended case in the HTPC article which has since changed to a Jou Jye case?

 

I think it should've got 0/10 for performance. It risked destroying the CPU, if you'd had a fry up for breakfast you wouldn't have been fast enough!

 

Yup - we went on the assumption that other Akasa cases were awesome so this should be - people buy brands after all. Aaaand we called this one wrong Mistakes happen

 

Other reviews of this case seem a bit more favourable (Computer Shopper, for example), which is quite strange. I was tempted to buy this case to use with an Atom board but having reading your review... I won't bother.

 

Fair enough Bindi. At least we now know its a steaming turd

 

123°C! OMG!

 

Is that the lowest set of scores anything has ever recieved from bit-tech? I certainly can't remember anything being that bad in the past! If it can't cool an atom what on earth is it useful for apart from a door stop!

 

It's not a 100% bad case. It's just a bad case for that sort of CPU. Put in a really low power passive Via cpu into one of these and it'll be a bit better.

Mini-itx was a format created for embeded boards of low power & low heat. Now we're setting better boards around it requires a bit of re-thinking on the case guys to come up with a good case to allow these teeny boards to be used for something decent!

My list - make it a little bit bigger, allow 1 3.5" drive or two 2.5" stacked and built in heat pipe for board cooling to move the heat to where you've got airflow.

 

The case serves it's purpose, can't expect much from a case that size.

 

It's not just that - the cabling doesnt fit, the SATA drive doesn fit properly and passive EPIA boards make it extremely limited in scope.

 

An Atom N270 is hardly what you'd call power hungry. Having spent time with the case myself for the impending Ion coverage I'm working on, there are so many flaws and design oversights that you really do have to wonder how this made it out of the factory and onto retailers' shelves.

It's a terrible product, but it does have some merit if you don't install a DVD drive - it doesn't overheat at least.

 

123C? Damn, my Atom CPU sits at a happy 40C, although I have my Atom board (the Intel one) in a small ATX case with a nice big fan sucking air across the board.

(Chipset actually runs cooler than the CPU at 30C, but that's because it's little 40mm fan died after a month or so of 24/7 operation and it now has a vented 80mm feeding onto it.)

 

"A - ka -sa,
easy as...
1 - 2 - 3 (°C )
or simple as..."
Aaand I can't really think of anything more to go with that song.

It is however somewhat good to see that despite all of Akasa's prior successes, you're not afraid to still tell it how it is. I had somewhat of a concern about this at one point since it seemed that every time I came on bit-tech I'd have to deal with a lot of Akasa praise - which could be the truth for all I know, but unfortunately for me (and others) Akasa isn't all that well stocked anywhere in Australia.
But seeing that it isn't all sunshine and rainbows when it comes to Akasa somehow actually makes me further consider the option of importing a case because from what I hear, they're very much worth it! (Unless of course they happen to be this one )

 

The Gigabyte board layout is actually the worst case scenario for this case.
Anything like Intel DQ45EK / FC, Intel D945GCLF2, J&W 7804, Jetway 780G JNC81-LF or Albatron 780G K1780G would do a lot better in terms of thermal performance and cable routing.

 

Wow... nice case.
I think the best thing you can about it is that it's small. 123°C... impressive. Team that up with a nice passively cooled graphics card around 100°C and you'll have the perfect HTPC radiator.

 

Mr Jerry from Akasa The Gigabyte Atom board conforms to a standard layout of Atom boards - 99% are the same as this. Gigabyte only changed the colours.

EDIT: So I've been told the standard Intel Atom boards are 29.5mm high heatsinks but the Gigabyte one is 35mm - the 0.5cm makes a difference apparently, but it still doesn't change the fact that it's got to get air from somewhere.

The Albatron is the same as a J&W 780G Minix and we tried other mini-ITX boards but we just don't have a cooler that will fit (out of many!! including obviously low profiles). but still, even a wider, v.low profile cooler and fan that you do find to fit will have at least half of it directly sucking off the underside of the optical drive.

Also the J&W 780G requires a fan over the northbridge heatsink as well in such environments - otherwise it overheats - so Im pretty sure it won't work not to mention the PWM heatsinks too. In fact, it's likely that many powerful northbridges will overheat because you can't effectively remove the heat from that area - regardless of what extra heat using an optical drive above it will generate as well. Imagine trying GPU offloading of a blu-ray movie?

Regardless of what motherboard actually fits - what about getting the hard drive in?

 

akasa has both AMD (AK-CC032) and Intel (AK-CC044) coolers for ITX cases compatible also with Enigma chassis. SATA HDD is best fitted upside down - solves the cable routing issue.

 

It's got some pretty specific requirements for hardware it seems. Why not just sell it with all the hardware in it already? That way you could prove how good your case actually is and maybe even make some more money.

 

I think there's a typo in the review, last page under the bit about the coolers.

"Ultra low profile less than 3.7mm(!!?)"

Do you mean 37mm?

Dan