Dynapower Black Widow ATX Mid-Tower Case

An attention getter for sure, with good cooling and convenience features – Joe

SUMMARY: An attention getter for sure, with good cooling and convenience features.

Case Lit Full

The spider ligths up when the system runs too hot

The good guys at Dynapower were nice enough to send a sample or their Black Widow ATX case. I have to say, it’s the most “themed” case I have seen in a while – if you liked Spiderman, you’ll love this case.

Case

Key Features

  • Material: 0.8mm Steel
  • Drive Bays External: 4 x 5 1/4″, 2 x 3 1/2″, Internal 4 x 3 1/2″
  • PCI Slots: 7
  • Front Ports: Two front USB and audio
  • Power Supply: Award 450w ATX12V V2.01 with 2 Double-Ball Bearing Fan, one fan with colored LED
  • Cooling System: 1 x 120 mm rear fan with 4 colored LED, 1 x 120 mm front fan optional; Thermal management to control the rear fan speed
  • Dimensions: 8″ x 19 1/4″ x 17″ High
  • Compatible with INTEL LGA775
  • Spider Thermal Indicator
  • Punched-hole metal side panel

A Detailed Look Inside

The Black Widow comes with a 120 mm rear exhaust fan,

Fan

a good size for effective case cooling. In addition, the case comes with a thin wire thermal probe which can be placed just about anyplace; when it detects an overheat situation, a red LED under the spider lights up – a very noticeable visual warning. As shown above, the fan also has four different LEDs.

The rear of the case

PS

shows the power supply (which has an LED on one fan)

PS LED

PS Label

rear fan and 7 PCI slots:

PCI Slots

{mospagebreak}

Looking toward the front

Front Inside

shows the CD ROM, floppy and hard drive cages; the small black box on the case bottom is the thermal probe controller:

Probe

Thin-film thermal probe – thin enough to slip next to the CPU core.

While this has only one fan plug, I don’t doubt that you could thermally control a front fan with a splitter. I found the fan to vary from 600 rpm at 20ºC to 1450 rpm at 55ºC. Note that the LEDs varied proportionately in brightness to temps.

A nice feature of this case is the no-screw plastic retention brackets for one CD and hard drive:

CD Bay

Simply rotating the center piece 180º releases the retention bracket; as shown below,

Drive Clip

there are two pins which engage the drive’s mounting holes to hold it in place – easy to mount and dismount.{mospagebreak}

In addition to the rear exhaust fan, there are holes in the front of the case

HD Cage

for an additional 120 mm or 80 mm fan (check).

The bottom front of the case has a tilt-out tray

USB

which contains two USB ports and audio ports – very convenient.

The back

Back

is pretty straightforward – a rear motherboard plate is included, but normallyt every motherboard ships with its own plate to insert in the slot.

The case features the usual mix of motherboard connectors as well as USB and audio pins for the front tilt-out tray.

Connectors

When powered, the case shows its stuff:

Case Front

Even when closed, the rear fan and power supply LEDs are quite visible, especially through the perforated side:

Case

The perforated side allows cooling air to be drawn in where it will do the most good – over the PCI slots and CPU area.

CONCLUSIONS

No doubt this case will attract attention, but in addition the cooling is quite good – I especially like the front fan which can directly cool hot hard drives. In addition, the thermal fan controller and front USB and audio ports is a great covnience feature.

Thanks again to Dynapower for sending this our way.

Email Joe

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