Date: August 10th, 2005
Article by: Joe Anderson (Hardware Reviewer)
Edited by: Nathan Glentworth (Owner / Head Editor)
Product was submitted by: Thermaltake / ThermalRock
<--SHOP FOR A THERMALTAKE THERMALROCK ECLIPSE ATX COMPUTER CASE HERE
INSTALLATION AND TESTING (cont'd)
The rails (marked left and right) snap onto the drives and slide into the chassis with little effort. The drive was very secure and the rails are hidden behind the bezel.
The only real issue I had during installation was with the plastic cover for the top 5.25-inch bay. After removing the screw (circled in red in the photo) I couldn’t get the cover out of the bezel. It appears that the hinge must be loosened for the cover to come out. I put the optical drive in the bottom bay, as I would have needed another pair of hands to steady the door while the hinge was removed. For most users, this would be a one-time inconvenience, however, given the otherwise excellent overall user-friendliness of the Eclipse chassis, this problem sticks out like a sore thumb.
What at first appeared to be a single, pre-installed brass standoff is in fact a “peg”, allowing precise motherboard location the first time. I was surprised at how much easier this little addition made motherboard installation.
Installation went very well. There is no removable motherboard tray, but the leads were long enough to allow me to make the connections outside the case and then install the motherboard. There are no sharp edges in the Eclipse and the removable cages made installation very easy.
With the power on, the lighting effects of the Eclipse throw off a pleasant blue glow, without being overly bright. A red LED shines through a small aperture to give the HDD icon a pinkish glow during hard drive activity. I like the idea of being able to view the activity light with the doors closed. The Eclipse is just a shade wider than most mid-tower cases which gives it a “stockier” appearance that I find very pleasing.
The window is quite large and doesn’t give the user many places to hide wires, but shows off the internals very well. I was a little surprised to find no illumination effects here, but it would be a simple matter to install a CCFL in your choice of colors. Lighted fans would be another option, but I would hesitate to replace these fans as, running at 1300 RPM, they are very, very quiet and move a lot of air. Speaking of fans, with a 120mm intake in the lower front and another in the upper rear, the Eclipse exhibits exceptional cooling with case temperatures never exceeding 6C above ambient.
