Aerocool Strike-X Air Review

1. Introduction2. Aerocool Strike-X Air: Packaging and Bundle3. Aerocool Strike-X Air: Exterior4. Aerocool Strike-X Air: Interior and Installation5. Testing Methodology and Performance6. Closing Thoughts7. View All Pages

Today we are going to look at the Aerocool Strike-X Air which is a very innovative chassis, designed to appeal to those enthusiasts who spend a lot of time inside their PC and change hardware frequently.  It uses an open design, similar to a test bench, which features a large mesh cover to hide the components .

Aerocool may not be one of the most well-known PC case manufacturers but they have been around for over ten years now.  They are best known for their cooling products, particularly their touch-screen fan controllers.  They have a number of other products in their range, though, including cases, CPU coolers and power supplies.

Features

• State of the art Open Frame PC case design for all PC users!
• Excellent cooling performance for gamers and enthusiast.
• Ideal case for engineers and reviewers for benchmark testing.
• Solidly constructed “ALL BLACK” chassis interior of 0.7mm SECC Japanese Steel w/PCI plate and mesh highlighted in red.
• Supports longer high-end VGA cards up to 330 mm.
• Supports 3 x 5 1/4″ bays and 3 x 2.5″/3.5″ HDDs (hot-swap)
• Removable ODD cage for easy ODD installation .
• 3 x SATA extension cables included .
• 1 x USB 3.0 + 3 x USB 2.0 and Audio/Mic ports are easily accessible from the front panel.
• Pre-drilled holes for cable management with high-end rubber protection to help tidy up the cable mess.
• CPU holes is pre-drilled on the MB plate for ease of CPU cooler assembly.
• Includes anti-vibration pad to protect your PSU from shock.
• Supports the latest XL-ATX MB such as Gigabyte's latest X58-UD9 Motherboard and also has 10 PCI slots to support Quad VGA cards.
• Water-cooling holes are pre-drilled to support water-cooling systems!!
• 1 x 20cm RED LED top fan included .
• 1 x 12cm RED LED fan for HDD cooling included.

The Strike-X Air is supplied in one of the largest boxes that has ever passed through the KitGuru labs.  It has a flat design which mimics the flat shape of the chassis, and is around twice the volume of a regular tower case box.

Aerocool have chosen to use a black and ‘fire' livery which looks quite exciting.  There are various images on the box which illustrate various features of the chassis.  There are also details of the key features and specifications on the box.

There are a few accessories included alongside the chassis inside.  We find all the screws required for installation supplied within a small plastic bag.  There is also a detailed installation guide included as well as a couple of spare power supply mounting brackets.

It's quite clear from the moment you open the box that the Strike-X Air is no ordinary case.  The form factor is fairly similar to other ‘test benches' on the market.  It's construction combines both steel and plastic feels and little flimsy in places.  The black and red finish is certainly eye-catching but we we'll let you decide whether you like the styling or not.

Rather than using a completely open design, Aerocool have chosen to include a large mesh cover which can be set it various orientations to allow access to the components installed within.  It also acts as a mounting point for a large 200 mm fan which helps generate airflow.

Along the front edge of the chassis there are a selection of front panel connections.  These consist of two USB3.0 ports, three USB2.0 ports, and two 3.5 mm jacks.  We find the power and reset buttons to the right of these.

Moving over to the left section of the case, there are three hot-swap hard drive bays at the bottom which features plastic caddies.  These support both 2.5″ and 3.5″ drives.  Above these, there are three optical drive bays which can be removed if required.

Looking at the rear of the chassis, we can see that there are ten expansion slots in total.  This should ensure compatibility with pretty much every motherboard on the market.  To the left of these there are four water cooling grommets, above the I/O panel.

There is also a long metal bar on the rear which features a number of pre-drilled fan holes.  These are designed to let you affix fans to the rear of the chassis.  This is quite flimsy, though, so we wouldn't recommend mounting a radiator to it.

Accessing the inside of the Strike-X Air is very easy indeed, just requiring us to flip up the plastic cover.

About two thirds of the width of the chassis is taken up by a large motherboard tray, with the other third being reserved for the supporting components such as the power supply, optical drives and storage drives.  This design isn't exactly ideal as it takes up a lot more space on your desk than other designs which locate these components under the motherboard tray.

Installing the power supply is fairly simple, requiring us first to secure a plastic bracket to the back of the power supply.  It can then be slid into the rear of the chassis and clipped into place.  We would recommend installing any modular cables before sliding it into place, though, as this area can be quite hard to access.

Installing the motherboard is fairly simple as there are a number of stand-offs pre-attached to the motherboard tray.  It can then be screwed into place.  This doesn't let you remove the motherboard as easily as most open test benches but it does ensure a secure attachment.  There is also a large cut out in the motherboard tray to facilitate the installation of large CPU coolers.

The open design of the chassis makes it very easy indeed to install graphics cards into the system as there is plenty of room to work with.  The card can be secured into place with the provided rubber coated thumbscrews.

There is space under the motherboard tray for cable routing and there are a number of grommets cut into the tray for this purpose.  Unfortunately, we weren't able to achieve a very tidy build as the cables on our Seasonic Platinum P1000W power supply were too-short to be routed in this way, forcing us to route them over the top of the motherboard tray.  We tidied them a little with some of the supplied cable ties to keep them neatly out of the way.

For our tests we will be using a Phanteks PH-TC14PE to cool the AMD Vision A8-5600K APU in the Aerocool Strike-X Air. Our test system also features an AMD Radeon HD 7950 graphics card. We overclocked the system to 4.3 GHZ for our tests using a voltage of 1.45V.

Test System:

Processor: AMD Vision A8-5600K.
Motherboard: Biostar Hi-Fi A85W.
Cooler: Phanteks PH-TC14PE.
Thermal Paste: Arctic Cooling MX-2.
Memory: 16 GB (4x 4 GB Mushkin Blackline 1600 MHz).
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 7950.
Power Supply: Silverstone Platinum P1000W.
System Drive: Kingston HyperX 3K 240 GB.
Monitor: Viewsonic VX2260WM.

Software:

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit).
CPUID Hardware Monitor.
Prime95 64-bit.
Furmark V1.9.2.

To test the thermal performance of the Aerocool Strike-X Air we loaded our test system for 15 minutes using Prime95 and Furmark and recorded the maximum temperatures reached using CPUID Hardware Monitor. We then restarted the system and left it for 15 minutes before recording idle temperatures.

Room temperature was maintained at 16 degrees C for the duration of our tests.

As expected, the thermal performance of the Strike-X Air is excellent, thanks to the open air design.

To conduct our noise level tests, we decided to keep the fans on our CPU cooler running and didn't use a passive graphics card.  The 200 mm fan included by Aerocool is near silent and we want to give you an idea of what you can expect when running an enthusiast system in this chassis.  After all, it is designed for enthusiasts.

The acoustic performance of the Strike-X Air is pretty poor.  The open sided design means that there is nothing to absorb any of the noise generated by the fans within.

Overall we are impressed with the Aerocool Strike-X Air.  It has very unique styling which we're sure will divide opinion, but is very easy to use nonetheless. It is clearly targeting the enthusiast audience who are always adjusting and playing with their hardware. It has an extremely large footprint so we would encourage you to make sure there's enough room for it on your desk before purchasing!

It can be a little fiddly getting the test bench set up in the first place due to the lack of space around the back of the power supply.  However, swapping components over when it's all set up is very simple indeed thanks to the open design.  We found that the sheer size of the test bench meant that the cables on our power supply weren't long enough to route neatly, though. So it might be worth investing in some cable extensions if your power supply has short cables.

Build quality is not top notch but the chassis feels reasonably sturdy. We like the inclusion of a lid which doubles as a fan mount, providing the components with some airflow.  This lid can be positioned in various orientations so that it doesn't foul tall air coolers on your motherboard, but is quite flimsy and doesn't feel very secure.  The thermal performance was good in our tests thanks to the unrestricted airflow.  Acoustic performance was poor though, as all the components are open to the air.

At a price of around £90 from Amazon, we feel that the Strike-X Air offers reasonable value for money.  It manages to find the middle ground between a case and an open test bench, making it perfect for those enthusiasts who don't want to fully commit to either.

Pros

• Great airflow.
• Easy access to components.
• Supports all types of motherboard.
• Hot-swap HDD bays

Cons:

• Flimsy in places.
• Enormous footprint.
• Can be noisy.

KitGuru says: A niche product from Aerocool that is sure to appeal to a number of enthusiasts.

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