ClearPC, C3 and BeanTech: The Clear Chassis Comparison

BeanTech BT82 Construction Continued

Overlooking our incident with the EMI shield, we moved onto the power supply.  We were pleased to see a bay shelf, which the other two cases lack.  The additional support puts less strain on the screw mountings.  Acrylic fractures very easily so keeping weight distributed becomes much more important than on a steel or aluminum case. 

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The BT82 also came with stereo feet.  Most enthusiast cases (minus the Chenming and Casetek lines) have adopted stereo feet on their cases.  Kudos to BeanTech! Unusually, BT decided to put all gold painted grills on their fans in this case. We just ended up removing them.

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The forward USB and firewire ports were not as glamorous as the C3 or ClearPC.  The ports are very utilitarian in look and feel, providing just the basic functionality.  We have noticed that some case manufacturers have started to move the forward USB ports up, away from the bottom of the case.  The ThermalTake V2000A is a perfect example of this new trend.  However, since these acrylic cases are not exactly intended to sit on the floor, we will let the poor placement of the USB ports hurt our opinion of this case.

Breakdown

1 No power supply 2 Drive bays x 11 4 x 5.25” External Drive Bay 2 x 3.5” External Drive Bays 5 x 3.5” Internal Drive Bays 3 82x82x25mm, 1 x Rear Exhaust fan 4 82x82x25mm, 1 x Front Intake fan 5 82x82x25mm, 1 x Side Exhaust fan 6 Forward 7 NO Removable motherboard tray

Slight bubbling on BT