Raidmax Cobra Mid-Tower Case Review
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Raidmax Cobra Mid-Tower Case Review
By Meng Vang
Manufacturer: Raidmax Co.
Product Name: Cobra
Model Number: ATX-502WBG
UPC: 854190502109
Price As Tested: $64.99 (Newegg | Amazon)
Product Name: Cobra
Model Number: ATX-502WBG
UPC: 854190502109
Price As Tested: $64.99 (Newegg | Amazon)
Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by Raidmax.
The Raidmax Cobra comes in a variety of different colors: Black, Red, Blue, White, and Titanium. We will be looking at the black one for this review. The Raidmax Cobra Black Steel Mid-Tower ATX Case will fit the bill of many consumers on a tight budget. Without spending a whole lot of money, the Raidmax Cobra offers many features that only some of the bigger and more expensive cases have. It provides tool-less drive bays, adequate space for cable management thanks to its wide body design, and four internal 2.5? drive bays for laptop hard drives and even SSD�s, which is crazy for a case in this price range. The Raidmax Cobra also provides great airflow for high performance air cooling along with the option for a custom water cooling system. Thanks to two water cooling retention holes at the back of the case, a custom water cooling system can be installed into this case. With so many high-end features, this makes the Raidmax Cobra a very competitive case due to its aggressive pricing.
Right off the bat, the case already looks like a cobra from the front. With a very mean and stylish look from the front of the Raidmax Cobra, this is great for consumers who are looking into a more fancier and �gamer-like� exterior design. Preinstalled with a front 120mm green LED fan and one traditional 120mm rear fan, the Raidmax Cobra comes ready to use out from the box. However, consumers also have the option to install two (2) 120mm top fans or two (2) 140mm top fans or one (1) 180mm top fan and one (1) 120mm bottom fan. This gives the user a lot of flexibility when wanting to have the best air cooling possible. Disappointingly, the Raidmax Cobra does come with a side window but a fan cannot be mounted to it. But having the option to add many fans to the top and bottom of the case will be far more sufficient when cooling a low to mid power consuming system.
Now let�s have a closer look at the Raidmax Cobra Black Steel Mid-Tower ATX Case. I will go through all of the important features and specifications that will be essential when building with this case.
Features and Specifications
The features and specifications were taken directly from the Newegg and the RAIDMAX website product page.
Features
- Exclusive wide body design: From 210mm wide max to 240mm, the RAIDMAX Cobra�s body makes more space for cable management and extra high CPU heatsinks. This chassis offers 25mm space between the side panel and the motherboard for easy cable management. It supports up to 176mm CPU heatsinks.
- Air cooling and water cooling upgrade, both available: 1 x 120mm green LED fan and 1 x 120mm rear fan were preinstalled for right out of box cooling. To get more cooling, you can install 2 x120mm or 2 x 140mm or 1 x 180mm top fan and one 120mm bottom fan. Water cooling solutions are also supported with two retention holes. Also, the bottom PSU fan filter prevents dust buildup.
- Easy to install and use: The slide out side panel handle allows you to access the chassis painlessly. The 5.25� ODD cage with three external bays features tool-free installation design. On the upper part of the front panel are smart one-click smart covers for easy ODD access. The 3.5� HDD cage with 3 internal drive bays and the 2.5� HDD cage with four internal bays are equipped with rail slide HDD rack technology for effortless hard drive or SSD installation. Your HDD configuration and expand will be a breeze.
- Easily communicates with peripherals: The front mounted USB 3.0, USB 2.0 and audio ports offers convenient communication between your host PC and peripherals.
Specifications
- External drive bays: 3 X 5.25?
- Internal drive bays: 3 X 3.5? H.D., 4 X 2.5? SSD
- System board: 10� X 12� Max size ATX form factor / Micro ATX
- Expansion slots: Standard ATX 7 Slots
- I/O Ports: 1 X USB 3.0 + 1 X USB 2.0 / 2 x Audio
- Dimensions: 525(L) X 240(W) X 460(H)mm
Raidmax Cobra Black Steel Case Exterior
Starting out on the front of the Raidmax Cobra Black Steel case, we can see that it has three 5.25? expansion bays for DVD and BlueRay drives. Even though people are tuning more into digital media as of today, the Raidmax Cobra still offers plenty of expansion bays for those who still want to watch movies from a physical disk. These expansion bays are tool less, meaning no screws are required. However, you can still use screws to help secure what ever you install into these expansion bays for maximum support.
Below the expansion bays are your front panel ports. Starting from the left, we have a power button, a USB 2.0 port, then a headphone jack, a microphone jack, followed by a USB 3.0 port, and a reset button. Above the front panel ports are your power LED and hard drive activity LED. It is good to see a case at this price level to have a front USB 3.0 port. The only downside to this is that it only has a total of two front USB ports. This can become a limiting factor to some people who find themselves using many USB devices. At the bottom, we have a huge intake for that preinstalled front 120mm green LED fan. This is great because having a huge intake allows the fan to pull more air into the chassis.
At the back of the Raidmax Cobra Black Steel case, starting from the top, we have that preinstalled 120mm fan which will exhaust warm air out of the chassis. Right below the fan are two water cooling retention holes. These will come in handy if you plan to build a custom water loop in this chassis. Moving down we will see there are seven expansion slots. It is standard to have seven expansion slots for a mid-tower case. These expansion slots are covered with rubber plates, which also has holes for ventilation.
At the very bottom, we can see that the Raidmax Cobra Black Steel case has a bottom mount for the power supply unit. Having a bottom mount for the PSU keeps the PSU much cooler because all what it does is draw air from the bottom of the case and out the back. It does not have to draw warm air from every component like in a top mount PSU chassis.
At the right side of the case, we have a small window that allows us to peek into where the graphics card will be installed. There are also dented-out parts on the side panel which will be great for tall CPU coolers up to 176mm. On the other side, it is similar to this side just that it lacks a window. Having these dented-out areas allows more flexibility for cable management as it gives more interior room.
Now that we have seen the exterior of the case, lets have a close look at what is on the inside.
Raidmax Cobra Black Steel Case Interior
The interior of the Raidmax Cobra Black Steel case has lots of room for expansion and cabling. Right off the bat, the most noticeable thing is the green motherboard tray. Although some people may not be a fan of green colors, the motherboard does cover up most of the motherboard tray after installation. The motherboard tray also includes rounded edges for cable management. This is great because rounded edges prevents your cables from getting cut during installation. It also prevents yourself from getting cuts as you install your cables, so Raidmax is thinking about you.
The motherboard tray has several cutouts for cable management. Look at the large cutout for the CPU mount. This gives lots of room to work with if you find yourself in need of changing CPU coolers when you do not want to take everything out of your case.
At the bottom, we can see where the PSU mounts. There is also a large cutout to the right of the PSU mount that leads to the back of the motherboard tray for cable management. This cutout is large enough for even some of the largest cables, such as the 24-pin cable for the motherboard. To the bottom right of the case, we can see there are three tool less 3.5? expansion bay slots for desktop hard drives. Right above that, we have four 2.5? hard drive and SSD tool less slots as well. The medal rail slide HDD rack can also be shifted towards the left to convert of from having four 2.5? expansion drives to four 3.5? expansion drives. So in total, there can be three 3.5? expansion drives and four 2.5? expansion drives or seven 3.5? expansion drives.
Then at the top right, we have those three 5.25? drive bays for your DVD or Bluray drives. Remember, these drives are also tool less but you can still have the option to install screws for maximum security.
To the right of the 5.25? drive bays, we have two motherboard cutouts that leads to the back of the motherboard for cable management. If you install anything into these 5.25? drive bays, you can route your cables using the closest motherboard cutout for the best cable management solution.
The Raidmax Cobra Black Steel case does provide one preinstalled 120mm front fan. But when I was building the case, I noticed there is a second 120mm fan mount on top of the preinstalled fan. Sadly, the top fan cannot spin because the spacing from the fan and to the front ports will be too close. The wires of the front panel ports will block the fan from spinning, rendering it useless. So I recommend you do not install a 120mm fan on top of the preinstalled 120mm front fan.
Now that we have seen the inside of the case, lets start building it and see just how much we can squeeze into the Raidmax Cobra Black Steel case.
Building in the Raidmax Cobra Black Steel Case
Having the ability to install a custom water cooling system, it was tempting for me to install a custom loop in the Raidmax Cobra Black Steel case. But because most people, especially if they�re on a budget, will not be spending money on an expensive custom water cooling system, I will instead be using high performance air cooling. Using the Cooler Master V8, this is a very tall CPU cooler. This is a perfect demonstration to demonstrate the wide body design for the Raidmax Cobra Black Steel case.
Test System Specifications
- Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-970A-UD3
- CPU: AMD FX-8120 Eight-Core Processor @ 4.3GHz
- RAM: 2 x 4GB G.SKILL Ripjaw X Series 1600MHz DDR3
- GPU: GIGABYTE Radeon R9-270X 2GB
- Audio: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium
- Disk Drive 1: ADATA SP900 64GB SSD
- Disk Drive 2: Seagate Momentus Thin 320GB HDD
- Cooler Master V8 CPU Cooler
- PSU: Raidmax Hybrid 530W Modular
The Raidmax Cobra Black Steel case is very flexible in terms of installation. The tool less drive bays were easy to use and required nearly no effort to clip onto my storage drives and install them into the drive bays. Lots of room behind the motherboard and the side panel also allowed easy access to cable management. The case does come with instructions on how to install your components into your case, but every thing was very straight forward to me. Even with such a tall CPU cooler, like the 158mm Cooler Master V8, it was still able to fit perfectly in this case thanks to its wide body design. The wide body design allows large CPU coolers as large as 176mm to be installed. This gives my Cooler Master V8 over 15mm of clearance space from the side panel.
image: http://benchmarkreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Raidmax-Cobra-Sample-Build-600x553.jpg
As some of you may know, the GIGABYTE Radeon R9-270X is a very long graphics card. Measuring at 11.5?, it makes it difficult to fit the entire card into most smaller cases. Have a look at the spacing here between the graphics card and the rail slide HDD rack.
- Here we have the rail slide HDD rack at its default 2.5? drive position. There is still a lot of room between the graphics card and the HDD rack.
- Here we have the rail slide HDD rack in its 3.5? drive position. We can see that even with such a long graphics card, like this GIGABYTE Radeon R9-270X at 11.5?, it still has about 5mm of spacing in between. This is a very close call but luckily the two does not touch each other.
For the best air cooling possible, I installed two 120mm top fans and one 120mm bottom fan. I have this system running positive air pressure because the two top fans, the bottom fan, and the front intake fan all intakes air. The only exhaust is the rear 120mm fan. I did this so there will be less dust buildup inside of the case. Ambient room temperature was around 24C (75F). I was running my AMD FX-8120 overclocked to 4.3GHz with the Cooler Master V8 CPU cooler under 1.37v. Even though the AMD FX processors are known to become a little toasty, my overclocked FX-8120 stayed relatively cool. It barely touched 40C while running Crysis 3 for a good hour. My R9 270X also came close to hitting 50C but never did. Thanks to the bottom 120mm fan that blows cool air directly onto my graphics card and the two top 120mm fans that blows air onto my CPU cooler, I was able to get great air cooling results. These temperatures are impressive for such a cheap case like the Raidmax Cobra Black Steel case.
Cable management was also very easy to manage as the Raidmax Cobra Black Steel case provides many motherboard cutouts specifically for cable management. Also note that because of the wide body design, the Raidmax Cobra has 25mm of space from the motherboard tray to the side panel for easy cable management. This is big enough to manage even some of the largest cables, like that thick 24-pin motherboard cable that every one loves. The only problem I encountered was that the cutout for the CPU power cable was a little out of place. If only the cutout was just a little bit bigger, it would have been easier to route the power cable to the CPU. This is only a small flaw, but I was able to route my CPU power cable to the CPU power plug on the motherboard just fine.
Because I�m running one SSD and one laptop HDD, it can be possible to mount them both onto this side of the case. Since the Raidmax Cobra Black Steel case has a lot of clearance room from the motherboard tray to the side panel, it may be possible to mount both my SSD and laptop HDD onto this side for a cleaner look. Overall, cable management is definitely convenient with this chassis.
ATX Case Final Thoughts
The Raidmax Cobra Black Steel case is an excellent case for anyone who is looking for a cheap case but with features only offered in the more expensive cases. It is a very well built case which has tool less drive bays, a wide body design for easy cable management and even the tallest CPU coolers, water cooling capabilities, and enough flexibility to install many case fans. I had a lot of fun building with this case because of the flexibility and convenience it offered. Even though I ran into some issues while putting the build together, I was still able to get everything working at the end.
Raidmax Cobra Conclusion
This is a fantastic case for someone on a budget. I�m not going to compare it to some of the most high-end cases, nor some of the cheapest cases. Instead, I want to compare it to some cases that will be in the same price range as the Raidmax Cobra. For the price, you are getting a lot from this case. I�m going to sound like a broken record but I cannot stop bragging about the water cooling capabilities and the fact that this case gives you an option to install up to four SSD�s. You really have to think for a while: Why will anyone with an expensive custom water cooling system with four SSD�s buy such a low priced case like this? All what I know is for a fact that the Raidmax Cobra is a real competitor since it comes at a cheap price but allows you to upgrade to a custom water cooler and/or add more SSD�s later in the future.
The Raidmax Cobra also keeps all of my components nice and cool. Even with a good overclock to my FX-8120 at 4.3GHz at 1.37v with the Cooler Master V8, it stayed really cool even while running some of the most demanding games and applications. With better fans and an actual water cooling system, I would have been able to retrieve much better results with this case if I decided to go that route. Instead I chose not to since most people who will be buying this case will be on a tight budget and won�t be able to afford an expensive water cooling system.
In terms of appearance, I really like the black and clean finish. It has a very nice front intake that looks like a cobra. The Raidmax Cobra doesn�t look too fancy nor too plain. I think it looks just perfect on the exterior. On the interior, I was kinda confused to why there was a green motherboard tray. Although you won�t be looking at the green motherboard tray while using your computer, it may still bother some people if they are not a fan of green colors. It would have been better if it remained black or even white. The front 120mm LED fan is also green, which matches the motherboard tray. I would have like it better if the front LED fan was white instead of green, but that is just my opinion.
This is a pretty heavy case for what it is, but that is a good thing. The entire body is made of steel with rubberized feet. The 5.25?, 3.5? and 2.5? expansion drive bays also feel very sturdy. The motherboard tray is very nicely constructed with round edges for cable management. During the build, I did not suffer as many cuts from the Raidmax Cobra than I did in my previous cases I built with. This is also good for the cables because cutting a cable can cause a short circuit to the system if the motherboard tray does not have rounded edges and cuts a cable. The front bezel is made of plastic, but it is a strong plastic and does not feel flimsy in any way. Just that I think it would have been better if there was more room to install another 120mm fan on top of the preinstalled 120mm front fan. I just do not understand why there is a mount here for a second fan if it is just going to be blocked by the wires from the front panel ports, which will make it nonfunctional.
As of January 2014, the RAIDMAX COBRA computer case was available online for $64.99 (Newegg | Amazon). Overall, this is an excellent case for the price. It offers many features that a typical user on a budget would not use now but maybe in the future. A user can use this case and easily add onto it in the future when they so desire to. This case may not be the best case out on the market, but with a little patience and the flexibility to work around its flaws, you can make the best out from the Raidmax Cobra Black Steel case.
Pros:
+ Great exterior looks
+ Excellent value for the price
+ Lots of room for cable management
+ Water cooling capabilities
+ Supports large CPU coolers up to 176mm
+ Bottom mount PSU
+ Supports video cards up to 28cm (40cm if rail slide HDD rack is removed)
+ Tool less drive bays
+ Supports four 2.5? drives and three 3.5? drives or seven 3.5? drives
+ USB 3.0 on front panel
+ Rounded edges for cable management on motherboard tray
+ Easy to clean dust filters for fans
+ Excellent value for the price
+ Lots of room for cable management
+ Water cooling capabilities
+ Supports large CPU coolers up to 176mm
+ Bottom mount PSU
+ Supports video cards up to 28cm (40cm if rail slide HDD rack is removed)
+ Tool less drive bays
+ Supports four 2.5? drives and three 3.5? drives or seven 3.5? drives
+ USB 3.0 on front panel
+ Rounded edges for cable management on motherboard tray
+ Easy to clean dust filters for fans
Cons:
� Green motherboard tray and green LED fan may not be appealing to some people
� 120mm fan above the preinstalled 120mm LED front fan does not spin because too close to front panel wires
� Side panel window attracts dust
� Wide body design makes the case bigger
� 120mm fan above the preinstalled 120mm LED front fan does not spin because too close to front panel wires
� Side panel window attracts dust
� Wide body design makes the case bigger
Ratings:
- Performance: 8.75
- Appearance: 8.25
- Construction: 9.00
- Functionality: 8.50
- Value: 9.75
Final Score: 8.85 out of 10.
(sumber dan artikel lengkap bisa di baca di : http://benchmarkreviews.com/10434/raidmax-cobra-atx-502wbg-mid-tower-atx-case-review/)