Summary 

This is the one of only three bench testing cases that supports the SR-2.  It is certainly more orientated more towards water coolers than the subzero crowd and has some flaws that would be easy for DD to correct on future versions if they hadn’t have closed down. 

 Packing 

The torture rack was packaged well, it was shipped flatpack style and had two layers of packing materials and cardboard boxes (pyramid foam, in the first cardboard box and then packing peanuts in the outer cardboard box).  The box had not been kicked around and so I wasn’t surprised therefore that everything was in good shape.

 Assembly 

Instructions were included and were very easy to follow.  In total it took less than an hour.  Here you can see all the sides of the rack layed out: 

Ikea style saves on shipping costs


There were many bags of nuts, bolts, standoffs and screws, however each bag was labelled clearly.  There were also two unlabelled switches for power and reset with wires that would need to be attached.  I did not use the switches:

 

Bananas were not included

During assembly I found that the amount of screws had not been fully adjusted for the SR-2 version, for example the aluminum motherboard backplate was three hex screws  short of being fully screwed down.

Here you can see the case with the case almost fully assembled with the lid (aka dust cover) rotated up (only one screw was screwed in in order to give a hinge like motion):

 

Being able to rotate the dust cover like this would have been a nice feature


Rotating the lid like this is not a good idea for routine use because the cover is very tight fitting and is hard to take on and off once the case is screwed together tightly.  It would have been nice if the lid was a fraction smaller and if there had been supports so that it could be easily removed when needed.  As it is you can either screw it in, or rely on friction to hold it in place.  To be honest after seeing the dust cover, I really don’t believe it’s worth it and I would never recommend buying one.

The motherboard standoffs required the motherboard screw to be screwed into the stand off first so that the stand off would then be easily screwed into the tapped hole.  I mounted an ATX board and it lined up just fine:

 

HPTX swallows up ATX for breakfast


Finish

All the acrylic was covered with the protective sticky paper that easily peeled off.  The cut outs seem to have been made with a laser cutter as the edges were pretty clear and smooth.  They weren’t perfectly smooth, but definitely good enough.

Design and ease of use

The design supports 3×240 radiators (DD recommends gtx rads I believe as not all will fit the pre made barb holes).  It also supports 2 120 radiators, however one of those clashes with the power supply.  The power supply location to me is really the major flaw of the design.  Not only does it block the 120 rad support on the right side, but it also blocks access to the cpu backplate:

 

Terrible PSU location


A smarter move would be to put the psu in the middle enabling both radiators and the backplate to be easily accessed.  As it is you must remove the motherboard to change the back plate which is a major flaw for a benching case.

Cabling however is not a problem as there are many cut outs on the motherboard tray.

Hard drives and optical drives mount to the wall of the case.  They only get supported on one side.  Personally I’d like support on both sides, but it seems to work.  The big flaw is that there are no pre drilled holes for 2.5″ drives which is really poor considering how mainstream ssd’s are now:

 

2.5″ is not the torture rack’s friend


A real hard drive cage as an option would have been nicer, and if single support was the only way, screwing the drives to the base seems better than the wall.

The case also does not support the H100 cooler without further modification.  This is to be expected as the H100 is fairly recent, however I believe DD should redesign the rad support to support this as well as more varied 240 radiator designs.  In the end I left the H100 awkwardly hanging on the front lip of the motherboard shelf:

 

This is how I feel when I do yoga – constantly on the edge of a faceplant


It would have been nice to have also made the 240 radiator mounts optional, having higher walls around the motherboard are not always desireable as it makes the board area more claustrophobic particularly for air and subzero work.

HPTX

When I was finally able to try an SR-X HPTX board in the case I found out something quite astonishing.  The board overhangs the case:



That is to say – a case that is designed to specifically to fit HPTX boards does not actually fit them properly.  The lid can not be closed when this is the case.  This is quite mind blowing!

Conclusion

For the SR-2 there are few benching cases available – Spotswood and HSPC are the only competitors.  It’s also priced competively compared to other SR-2 cases which are mostly $250+, although when a direct comparison is made to benches it seems overpriced.  However the flaws are still very dissapointing and for ATX boards I feel like the designs of the alternative benches are better.  Essentially the design is outdated and could really use a refresh.  Sadly as Danger Den has now gone out of business this won’t happen.  Good packaging and clear instructions don’t really make up the many design flaws.  Also the dust cover/lid was really disappointing particularly given that it can’t even be used when an HPTX board is fitted

Overall 3/10

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