Testing and Results

Test Rig

Processor	Intel C2D E6750 @ Stock
Motherboard	MSI P45 Platinum
RAM	Geil Black Dragon (2 x 1GB) DDR2 6400
Graphics Card	Zotac 9500GT
HDD	Hitachi Deskstar P7K500
OS	Windows Vista 32bit

Methodology

Testing cases is a rather odd ball, as the main test of a case is the features, cooling and noise level in which it entails. We’ve detailed the features and aesthetics of this case, so all that needs to be conducted now is some small detailed tests to highlight any problems in which the case could suffer from.

Strength: The way in which we test strength is fairly simple. We stand on the top of the case and jump up and down on it – this is quite a fun test and can really show the effectiveness of the construction. A case which is strong should not be damaged from this test at all; whereas a weak case would bend and buckle.

Noise: Testing noise is quite difficult as expensive sound equipment is needed which unfortunately, we don’t have access to. Instead, we use our own God given human ears to inform you an ‘as accurate as we can get’ explanation on the case’s noise with a comparative conclusion of its noise.

Cooling: We don’t usually test this – although sometimes we may take temperatures from different components – what we do is explain to you the way in which the cooling of this particular case works. We then highlight any issues or improvements which can be made to the cooling

Strength

I thought I’d start with the test which looks to be a problem for the Skeleton – strength. How tough is this case? Well, I was quite surprised. Hoping for a dramatic smash, I stood upon the case and nothing happened. Then I stood onto the mesh grill which conceals the 250mm fan. A slight bend started to form, so I decided that it probably wasn’t a good idea to jump up and down on it and therefore hopped off. However, it’s quite clear that if you stand on a fan grill, it’s going to bend – certainly a one of this size. Bar the fan grill, the Skeleton survives and concludes to show this worthy case certainly packs some muscle.

Cooling

Well for starters, this case is an open-air chassis. It doesn’t really need cooling given that any fan blowing air will be ambient temperature. However it does have fans to help quickly draw air to the main components. One fat 250mm fan quickly feeds air to the core components (motherboard, CPU, graphics card and RAM), whilst an optional (not really needed) 92mm fan can help cool the hard drives. But like I’ve said, this is an open-air chassis so you don’t really need case fans – they’re just an added extra.

Noise

Turn the 250mm to high, it’s loud; turn it to medium, it’s loud; turn it to low, it’s silent as ever. There’s not much point setting the fan to higher than medium given that all its blowing onto the components is ambient temperature. SO give yourself some peace and quiet; set the fan to low (400rpm).

The ‘Super Big Boy’ fan emits a nice radiant glow. Here’s is a few of the colour patters:

Cost

Retailing at £115 the Skeleton is a bit on the pricey side of cases. However, many ‘Test Bed’ style cases of this specification seem to sell for around the same price. The ‘Top Deck’ test beds which are nowhere near as good as the Antec sell for £103. Pay £12 extra and you’ll get yourself a ‘whole lotta Rosie’.