AOpen H700B Full Tower Review - PAGE 1

Introduction

Full tower cases are something of a dying breed. With the advent of super mid towers that contain almost as many drive bays as a full tower but in a more compact form, it is hard to build a case justifying the purchase of a full tower. The growing popularity of LANs have enthusiasts clamoring for smaller, lighter cases. In the office environment where space may be a premium, there is also a transition away from large machines except for servers. In light of all of this, full towers still have a place in my heart as someone who tinkers with computers all the time. First of all there is a lot more room in a full tower. Many quality mid tower cases have pull out motherboard trays which helps alleviate the problem during installation but work on the case afterwards with drives and cables in the way can become frustrating quickly. Heat is less of an issue because of the larger volume and the ability to mount a lot more fans. One of the flaws in the super mid tower design is that it does not take cooling into account; the possibility of putting 8 drives into a case is nice but that would generate a tremendous amount of heat without proper cooling which a lot of these cases cannot provide.

Enter the H700B from AOpen. Although AOpen is a big manufacturer of OEM parts, the cases that we have received from them goes beyond the standard beige cases that are all too common with OEMs. We have taken a look at both their mATX H360 as well as the super mid tower H600B. Both featured some good ideas and even though the implementation was not flawless they showed promise. The H700B is a monster of a full tower featuring a silver and black motif. The specs are here quickly-

Our particular model came with a 350W powersupply which we will go into more detail about a little further on.