Verdict: Proving conclusively that size doesn't matter.
An object's style and appearance are largely subjective matters, so there's no definitive right or wrong. However, if you're going to take a basic steel chassis, paint it black and slap a load of plastic tat all over it, you'll struggle to convince that bloke from 'Grand Designs' that you've made anything other than a mess. When we tell you that the EL Diablo from A+ is a basic steel chassis with some garish plastic bits attached to it, you might understand why we're less than enthusiastic about the case's looks.
Looks, of course, aren't everything when it comes to PC cases. One of our favourite cases, the Jeantech Phong II, is an unapologetically ugly case. In light of this, we put the dodgy plastic faux-armour looks of the EL Diablo to one side to discover what we were really dealing with.
First off, the endoskeleton is composed of steel, making the EL Diablo heavy but significantly cheaper than similar-sized aluminium units. It's large enough to accommodate an E-ATX motherboard, and the front panel has a door behind which are five 5.25in bays. Beneath these is an externally accessible 3.5in bay. On either side of the small bay, you'll find the power and reset switches. The door might not have much artistic merit or do anything particularly useful apart from hiding drives (there's no lock, for example), but it's reasonably solid. On the top of the case is a plastic flap that covers the usual pair of USB 2 ports, FireWire and the headset connections.
You can install six hard disks in the drive cage, although one of the bays is taken up by a storage rack for the plastic rails that you use to install disks. This is particularly handy, as such proprietary components are easy to lose and extremely hard to replace. However, in order to make space for six hard disks, A+ has rotated the cage, so it sits across the airflow from the front intake fan.
Cooling the El Diablo is a matter that the designers seem to have taken very seriously. We mean 'very seriously' in the same way that designers of monster trucks tackle the task of driving over cars 'very seriously'. We can't help but feel that the makers of BigFoot (www.bigfoot4x4.co.uk) considered the problem of clambering over normal cars, accorded it a good two or three seconds of contemplation, then went out to acquire the biggest-possible circular objects they could find to make the problem go away. The same approach seems to be applicable to A+ with the EL Diablo - it has two massive fans to push air into the case, which have fan controllers to keep them quiet.
So just how big are the two round fans that A+ has used? The front intake fan is a modest 250mm, while the side intake is a massive 330mm, so there isn't much to complain about as far as air intake is concerned. However, as with most modern cases, neither fan has a dust filter. Instead, A+ fits grilles in front of each fan to keep out insects and fingers, but dust will easily enter the case.
The 330mm fan blows cool air directly onto your motherboard and the key components installed in it. Air from a fan doesn't blow in a straight line, however; instead, it blows outwards in a cone shape. With this in mind, we'd recommend leaving the rear 120mm fan vent open to allow some of the air pushed in by the massive side intake fan to escape.
More worryingly, air will also push toward the hard disk cage where it will contend with air pushed in by the front intake fan. This could lead to heat build-up, as air burbles around the hard disks rather than flowing over them. For this reason, we wouldn't fit more than three disks, and make sure that there are empty bays between them.
Given that there are lights on the front and sides of the case, as well as fan power and controller cables to contend with, the EL Diablo could have easily left us with a rat's nest rather than a PC of which we could be proud. However, A+ has shown some foresight in this respect, pre-sleeving some cables and attaching others to double-sided tape pads. This means that all the cables that could have been so troublesome are easily tidied.
Conclusion
Big case fans are in vogue at the moment and it's easy to see why. A large fan pushes a lot of air at a low speed and so makes less noise. However, large side intake fans mess with the usual ATX cooling model, so attention must be paid to how to use big fans. We're concerned that this hasn't happened here; both fans suck in air, which could lead to a contention of airflow in the hard disk area.
However, enough air is pumped into the case to enable you to cool a high-performance PC effectively, so the EL Diablo goes some way to justifying its price, especially as it's a roomy case for an ATX motherboard. However, it's still a shade on the pricey side, especially if you don't like its dodgy looks.
