Contents
Fractal Design
Fractal Design is mainly focused on cases, and while we agreed that their PSU series are getting somewhat old, I guess we won’t see much change in this area for this year at least. Even though…there’s a chance things will get moving from the other side (their OEM supplier), but nothing is sure now so we’ll have to see. Anyways, they did have some relatively fresh case models, lets start with the small Node 202 ITX enclosure. It comes with a 450W SFX unit and some PCIe risers to install full-length graphics cards. I guess it can be turned into one of those Steam box thingies.
You can buy those risers individually as a spare part, which is great, because sometimes the fleabay ones are of very poor quality. And you can also get the stand, and that’s a good thing considering if you only knew how often you lose these things when moving to new place…OK, let’s move forward.
Another small case is the Core 500, also quite fresh, more of the ordinary concept here with a big 140mm rear fan to move some air. It should handle an ordinary ATX power supply, mounted in the front.
And that’s not all, there’s still the Nano S which can take a water radiator just behind the front panel. Though I’m not sure it’s actually a good idea to heat the air just as it enters the case, but on the other hand, you can mount it on the ceiling as well. The Nano S can also take a full ATX PSU. If all goes well, I’ll get a sample of these new models here for review…
Next there was the older Define S (with no 5.25” and 3.5” cages) and some Fractal Venturi fans.
Chieftec
Chieftec displayed quite a few power supplies. I am somewhat perplexed by this company, as they have about 15 different series on the market at this moment, with some newer revisions to them as well. It is good to know that they have the same name for both OEM and retail units, then it will get slightly easier to understand the wide line-up. One such unit is the older semi-modular A-90, which is a 230V nominal unit with >90% efficiency. It is actually not certified though. Similar to it is the Navitas with fixed cabling, which ranges up to 1250W and comes with actual 80 PLUS Gold certification. It has now been refreshed with new 450-750W models (GPM-x50S instead of older GPM-x50C models).
You can clearly see the two different versions of a single series (Arena/iArena). Also the Smart series carries not only OEM and retail units, but also standard ATX and SFX, including the 500W SFX-L from Sirtec and some other newer models. Most of the other units are from Channel Well, including the new Force models.
There’s another brand new series, the Eco, ranging between 400 and 700 W. It has no certification but promises efficiency of about 85 %. It’s main target is system integrators. Another series is the A-135 with a 135mm fan, also newly refreshed. This one comes from Sirtec and is 80 PLUS Bronze certified.
Besides PSUs, there were many Chieftec cases at CeBIT 2016, from some older SFX to ITX ones (including the passive HF-200B/HF-200SL) and also the SJ-06B, which has become a production version since last year’s prototype. It is an interesting concept for partially passive cooling.
Another small case is the UC-02B desktop/tower one which can still handle a full-ATX motherboard! This is quite nice. Then there was a prototype of some office mid-tower but I didn’t notice its name, if it even yet has one.
Loading ...