Akasa Omega

Assembly

To assemble everything you need to set up the mainboard tray first. Installing the board poses no problem and the bend of the rear panel can be counteracted with the use of your graphic cards or PCI expansion cards. The latter slots do not have a locking mechanism, so these will be forced out of the slot by the bent tray. You may want to make sure that all of these are inserted correctly once the tray is back in the system and the thumb screws are in place.


Filling the hard drive cage outside of the chassis is a breeze. Simply use the black screws to fix each drive, then slide it into place. The tray holds well even without the four thumb screws, thanks to a single plastic lock within the case. You should still secure it correctly when taking the case to a LAN party, but at home, this should suffice.


To install the power supply you will have to remove the top of the case. This is done by unscrewing two further thumb screws. Such a system has many advantages. First of, you can install any PSU easily, no matter how large it is and it gives you great access to some dark corners to hide unused cables in. Installing the optical drive does not require the removal of the top, but to show how it is held in place, we have done so for this review.


Once everything is installed and connected, you can see, how clean the cables are routed. I did not spend a lot of time trying to clean things up, but there was really no reason to change anything. The case is also deep enough to hold even the largest graphic cards out there.

Finished Looks

Upon closing everything up and plugging in the power I was suprised to hear - nothing. Akasa has picked some great fans for this case, as they are incredibly quiet. I had to move my head within 10 cm of the rear or front of the case to hear them at all - even when using them at full speed with a Molex adapter. The two LEDs light up in blue and green. A nice combination for sure. The blue one is much brighter than the green light but this is a normal effect with this color.


The rear does not hold any surprises, everything is where it should be and everything is easiliy accessible.


Taking a look at the air vents, an optical drive in the upper most external slot will block the air vent. This means that you will have to choose between any kind of cooling or a drive in the top drive bay. The side vent does give you a look at the insides of the case. Adding some CCFLs within the Omega should certainly add to the overall look and should do nicely as a LAN party case. Even the use of LED equipped fans should have the same effect.