Introduction

I would like to thank Houri at Akasa Europe for supplying the review sample.

The Akasa Group of companies was founded in 1997 with offices in Taipei and London. The brand Akasa was launched in 2000. Akasa have been at the forefront of the Custom PC revolution, with the introduction of Extreme Coolers, for the overclocking fraternity, quickly followed by aerodynamic round cables and PAXmate sound absorption kits. These Akasa PC products are retailed through the leading on-street companies, they can also be found at the major e-retailers.

Akasa now has outlets in Asia Pacific, Middle East, Northern & Southern Europe, USA and South America. They have a production facility in China and OEM many products for leading brands.

Today we get to take a look at their newest ATX case - the Mirage-62.

Specifications

<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable" width="450">
<tr>
<th scope="row">Color</th>
<td scope="row"> Black</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Drive Bays </th>
<td scope="row">4 - External 5.25"<br />
2 - External 3.5"<br />
7 - Internal 3.5"</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Material</th>
<td scope="row">Aluminum & mirror finish, stainless M/B tray</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Form Factor </th>
<td valign="top" scope="row"> ATX & EXT ATX</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Expansion Slots </th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">8 standard slots </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Case Fans </th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">2 x 120mm fan slot in front & rear optional </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Dimensions</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row"> 460 x 240 x 560mm (H x W x L)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Switches</th>
<td valign="top" scope="row">Power, Reset</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th valign="top" scope="row">Front Access </th>
<td valign="top" scope="row"><p>2 x USB, 1 x FireWire, 1 x Audio </p> </td>
</tr>
</table>

Packaging

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A.../boxfronts.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...s/boxbacks.jpg
The packaging has the slogan "Coolest Case Ever" printed across the entire front side. This is completely different and gets the potential buyers' attention. The back has the case in all its parts as well as its features in English written on it. This makes for a very clean and still catchy packaging.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...s/boxopens.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...asepackeds.jpg
Once the sturdy cardboard box was opened, the top of the case was seen. This is different as well, as most manufactures tend to place the case with the front toward the top. Akasa went with some foam spacers which have the advantage of surviving more than just one fall, unlike Styrofoam.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...ttleboxess.jpg
There were three cardboard boxes inside the case. Cases usually have one or two boxes, so imagine my surprise when I discovered three of them.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...s/airducts.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...es/screwss.jpg
I opened the big brown box first. All it included was a 12cm air duct with mounting screws. The duct is made out of soft plastic, while it may not look so high quality the soft plastic eliminates possible vibrations being passed on from the fan. The second box was filled to the rim with two pieces of paper, one zip tie, a standard backplate for the mainboard, a sticker for the backplate and three bags of screws. The sticker is a very nice addition. The user now has the choice of using the sticker or going with the mirror finish, naked look. There are plenty of screws included. One bag of black screws for optical and floppy drives, one bag of black screws for hard drives and one bag of normal screws for the general installation of all the parts.
As you see, it is a complete package. The only thing I did not understand is the single zip tie. Akasa should have included a larger number or none at all.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...s/rollings.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...s/manualss.jpg
The last box had another surprise - four chassis wheels. They can be screwed onto the bottom of the case. Two of them feature locks, to keep the case from rolling all over the floor. There was no real manual included, just a very detailed diagram of the USB/Firewire connectors and diagram of the case in parts. If you have trouble putting together IKEA furniture using their plans, do not ever bother looking at these as you will have a very hard time grasping the entire concept and what everything means. A little illustrated booklet would have been nice.

The manual is simple, but includes pictures to help you if need be. I did not have any problems installing anything, as it all was quite straight forward.

A Closer Look

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A.../casebacks.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A.../psumounts.jpg
The first thing that becomes apparent when seeing the case is its width. It is at least 3-4 cm wider compared to normal Midi towers these days. The back of the case shows off the mirror finish metal of the mainboard tray. All screws are the thumb variant, so opening and closing the case should be quite easy. The power supply can be mounted in any way you like. It can be turned upside down, although this is not suggested for power supplies equipped with a 120 mm fan. There are no thumb screws for mounting the power supply itself.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...ges/fronts.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...frontopens.jpg
The front looks great with the wide door. The plastic used is not the strongest, but holds up quite nicely. It is made of actual black plastic, so you will not need to worry about the paint scratching or pealing. The door is held in place by magnets and can be opened up nice and wide. Akasa has a small, very elegant white logo on the bottom right of the case.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...caseside1s.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...deupgrades.jpg
The sides of the Mirage are nothing out of the ordinary. Both sides are completely closed off and do not offer any fans or windows. Akasa does offer optional side panels for the case. They were kind enough to send the "thermal enhanced side panel" along. There is also a window side panel available for the case.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...gradefan1s.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...pgradefans.jpg
The outside of the panel upgrade sports a very unique and good looking, but certainly quite useless plastic part, holding a thick honeycomb grill. Akasa could have just used a dust filter, while keeping the honeycomb theme. The fan on the upgraded side is a 12 cm Akasa labeled fan with a mainboard header. I am always a fan of such headers as you can let the mainboard take care of the fan speed, an adapter to 12V Molex would have been a nice addition.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...s/buttonss.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...images/ios.jpg
The power and reset buttons can be pressed when the door is closed. The functionality of the LEDs can be seen through the door as well. It is great that Akasa has thought about the fact that users may not want to open the door to power up the computer. The side sports the usual two USB, one Firewire and audio connectors. As you can see, the holes do not line up so that you will have difficulties plugging something in. I unscrewed the connectors and screwed them back on. That solved the problem. This was just a one time thing, so expect any other Mirage-62 to have the connectors lined up properly. The cables reaching into the case are the usual standard connectors, even the light grey color is the same as in any other case.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A.../caseopens.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A.../casebares.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...barefronts.jpg
Once the side panels are removed, the black interior of the case is shown. It is quite refreshing to see a different color inside a case, instead of the usual plain steel silver. The mainboard tray is made of steel and has a complete mirror finish. I chose the above picture as you can see my tripod and camera, along with my soccer ball.

One of the big highlights of this case is the possibility to remove all panels and the front, leaving you the bare case. This presents the best possible scenario for building and wiring anything in your case. The drive bays are covered by metal parts which need to be broken out, but can be screwed back on if need be.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...es/filters.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...lterpartss.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A.../fanmounts.jpg
The bottom of the bare case holds the filter for the 12 cm fan. There are four thumb screws and two normal screws present. These hold the drive cages in place. There is a removable dust filter in front. This can be easily removed and cleaned out. The mount of the fan resides right under the filter.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...bareaparts.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...es/mbtrays.jpg
The afore mentioned drive cages can be removed. There are three cages in total: one for up to two floppy drives or hard drives, one for two hard drives and another one for five hard drives. All of these can be taken out, making an installation of drives quite easy. The mainboard tray can be removed by unscrewing five thumb screws in the back. It is good that Akasa chose steel for this part of the case, as it will carry a lot of weight with CPU coolers easily reaching the one kilo mark and graphic cards getting longer and heavier all the time. You will definitely appreciate the steel construction when using QuadSLI.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A.../traybacks.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...inboardccs.jpg
The back of the mainboard tray sports 8 expansion slots, which is interesting as most mainboards only have seven. This gives the user the option to connect things like USB brackets to the bottom, unused slot, without loosing any expansion space. There are also two punch-outs for the use with legacy connectors like parallel ports. I would have loved to see two different sized punch outs so serial ports could be routed through the back as well. The fan grill uses the honeycomb form as well, making it quite sturdy without offering any air resistance. The other end of the mainboard tray features a little plastic part with the purpose of routing cables through them. It also sports the speaker to be connected to the mainboard. This rounds up a very well engineered mainboard tray.

So let's install the parts and take a look at it up and running.

Installation & Finished Look

Installation

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...s/hddtrays.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...s/fpptrays.jpg
Installing the drives was very easy. The included drive cages made installing the drives painless. The only other, better method would have been the use of drive rails. the same goes for the floppy drive. I had to line up the floppy drive with the case front first, before taking this picture. so I actually had to screw the floppy drive in, while the cage was inside the case. Drive rails would have eliminated the problem. The optical drives were installed the old fashion way, by sliding them into the case and securing them with screws.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...installeds.jpg
Installing the mainboard was straight forward. Just screw in the stand-offs and install the motherboard and all the cards.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A.../fanstucks.jpg
Once I slid in the mainboard tray, the hard drive cage located under the power supply obstructed the fan, so I had to remove it. Having the option of installing so many hard drives in a case may be very nice, but with today's large CPU coolers the odds of everything fitting is quite slim. You will have to use water cooling to make 100% sure that you are still able to use the additional hard drive cage.

Finished Look

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...installeds.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A.../openinsts.jpg
Once everything was installed and connected, the benefit of such a wide case becomes apparent. I had so much space to clean away cables and route them, invisible to the user. There is so much space besides the power supply and toward the top of the case, that you will not have any troubles even using a 1000W power supply in this system. This case is simply perfect for the use of Quad SLI or other full length add-in cards, without having to move to a full tower case.

Once the sides were closed and everything was installed, the door was opened again, and this picture was taken. I had to move my SATA drive tray in the 5.25" bay back a few millimeters to be able to close the door, but this was to be expected. There will always be problems with using anything other than flat devices in cases with doors.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A.../finisheds.jpg http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...mages/leds.jpg
This is how the case looks when everything is closed up. Looks quite elegant if you ask me. The power LED is bright blue, while the hard drive LED is green. Even though the green may be just as bright as the blue, the color blue is one of the brightest colors so the green is drowned a tad bit.

Value and Conclusion

<table width="100%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" id="result">
<tr><th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/dollar.gif</th>
<td>

The Akasa Mirage-62 sells for around $150 in the US and just under £100 including VAT (around £84 excluding VAT) at big etailers like Scan.co.uk in Europe. This may seem a bit high, but the case will definitely outlast more than just one generation of parts.

</td>
</tr><tr>
<th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/thumbup.gif</th>
<td>

Great look
Aluminum to reduce weight
Very modular design
All drive cages removable
Solid, slide out motherboard tray
Very good cable management possibilities
Incredibly easy to work with
Access to power and reset button with closed door
Side panel upgrades available
Lots of space - enough for QuadSLI and 1kW power supplies
All the screws you could ever need are included
Four caster wheels are included
Air duct included
Dust filter for front fan
Door opens wide
Well packaged

</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/thumbdown.gif</th>
<td>

Small hard drive cage will not fit with big cooler
Plastic front a bit soft.
Side I/O did not line up perfectly
A bit pricey

</td></tr>
<tr><th>9.4</th>
<td>
The Akasa Mirage-62 can simply be described as the Hummer of PC cases - wide, big, black and a bit pricey. It looks quite indestructible. Even with these looks, the case is quite light, thanks to the Aluminum used. Akasa made a wise choice by going with a steel mainboard tray and frame, but as nothing on this case is quite ordinary, the tray has a mirror finish and the aluminum frame is painted black. Despite its usual midi tower height, the case has a lot of space and thanks to the completely modular design, working with this case is incredibly easy. You can also stick up to seven hard drives, two 3.5 inch drives and four 5.25 inch devices into the case. Akasa offers a window side panel as well as a side panel with a 12cm fan for this case. I can only imagine how beautiful the black interior will look in this case when blue UV cables and the needed UV light are used. This is definitely a case which can handle any current hardware and future graphic cards and monster power supplies without any problems. If I have to point out anything negative about this case it would be the plastic used for the front as it is a bit soft and does not feel very sturdy. But there is simply no way that this case does not deserve an Editor's Choice Award!</td></tr>
<tr><th></th><td>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/editorschoice.gif</td></tr>
</table>