Computing on Demand PC News & Reviews
The rear end of the unit is nothing special; just your standard connections: the SATA connections, power connections, a power switch, an 80mm cooling fan and some jumpers for HDD activity. Luckily, the included 80mm fan does an adequate job of cooling your drives while producing little to no noise at all. The BPU-340SATA and the BPU-340SAS differ in that the 340SATA can use a couple of standard 4 pin molex connectors instead of only serial ATA power connectors. This allows some users with older power supplies to take advantage of these devices without using adapters.
The backplane produced by iStarUSA allows me to install 4 drives, using only 3 5.25″ bays, and having easy access to them. Outside of the useless locking system and the power buttons this unit is nice. After my initial experience with the broken latching mechanism I wanted to use the unit for a while before publishing this article. I can say with confidence that there have been no issues with the unit since the initial incident. For your confidence, I removed the drives twice a day to see if there were any other dependability issues.
In my experiences with iStarUSA, they live up to their word. A friend of mine purchased a tower chassis from them based on one of our reviews and had an issue with the hinge on the front bezzel; they shipped him a new hinge without any struggles. That to me is worth its weight in gold. Would I buy one? Absolutely… not just for the product, but because iStarUSA stands behind their products.
Places to Buy: (I don’t endorse ANY retailer)
