Revisiting the Akasa Enigma
Posted on 27th Mar 2009 at 13:29 by Richard Swinburne with 7 comments
It wasn't unexpected that Akasa had a few points of concern about our review. Akasa said that in order for the case to perform optimally, the mini-ITX board needed to be less than 30mm tall and we needed to use Akasa's LGA775 or AM2+ coolers specially designed for it.
We checked our Gigabyte GA-230D and found the northbridge heatsink and fan was 35mm tall, while the Jetway NC92-330-LF was 29.5mm, as was the reference Intel Atom board.
Click to enlarge
Our immediate concern is "how do I know what mini-ITX motherboard I buy is compatible?" We looked around at mini-ITX boards listed on websites and seldom do they list the total height, making choosing the right board a very difficult task.
Click to enlarge
Another thing is the complete lack of manual in the box - we had to be instructed by Akasa of the "correct way" to install everything which is very specific. Just a sheet of A4 explaining that a 90 degree SATA connector is required (another additional purchase from Akasa), and the hard drive should be installed upside down and facing inwards would have been good.
We checked our Gigabyte GA-230D and found the northbridge heatsink and fan was 35mm tall, while the Jetway NC92-330-LF was 29.5mm, as was the reference Intel Atom board.
Click to enlarge
Our immediate concern is "how do I know what mini-ITX motherboard I buy is compatible?" We looked around at mini-ITX boards listed on websites and seldom do they list the total height, making choosing the right board a very difficult task.
Click to enlarge
Another thing is the complete lack of manual in the box - we had to be instructed by Akasa of the "correct way" to install everything which is very specific. Just a sheet of A4 explaining that a 90 degree SATA connector is required (another additional purchase from Akasa), and the hard drive should be installed upside down and facing inwards would have been good.
