iStarUSA Nitro AX

After everything is installed, I am actually pleased with the way things worked out. The room provided for the PSU makes for a stress free, scratch-less, installation; this helps to make up for the lack of room they provide for the main board installation, from which I am still twitching. The hard drive rack and provided rails aren’t of the highest quality, but they do the job well giving me some wiggle room. As it turns out, the handles for the motherboard tray provide some cabling relief as well!

I would have liked to have seen at least a fan guard installed on the exhaust fan. Granted, this fan doesn’t induce tornados, but in a chassis that costs over 100.00 they should spend an extra 1.00 and protect my fragile fingers. After all, I do aspire to be, like George Costansa, a hand model. Drive rails seem to be arising as a standard now, but these seem flimsy. I haven’t broken one yet, but I do see that coming so be careful because they don’t give you any extras.

With all of its features and shortfalls, I really can’t say I would send this case out as highly recommended. It seems more like your average chassis farting along. There is nothing that stands out about it, aside from its elegant front bezel. If iStar chose to include some “go the extra mile” features, they could have really changed my opinion on this case. Had they made it aluminum, provided us with higher quality rails, improved the expansion card retention mechanism (Thermaltake still holds the crown there), and made the case a little bit deeper they could have had a contender. Oh, and as far as the Super Cooling you read about in the introduction, phooey, it has 2 120mm fans, what is super cooling about that? I almost forgot to mention… I pressed the reset button the other day, and IT WENT INSIDE THE CASE!!!

Bottom line, would I buy one? Fix some of those things mentioned above and the answer is yes.

Note: After further review, a member of the COD staff (Rbreb13 and his hawk like vision) realized that the 3.5″ drive assembly is eerily similar to that of the Antec Sonata. See here: Click Me. I figure, if it will work for Antec, why won’t it work here?

JSgolfman’s thoughts: My general comments would be that they included a lot of style but not a lot of substance. It has the hip factor down, but aesthetics can only carry you so far. The devil is in the details, as they say. They may seem like minor issues, but it displays a lack of concern for the end user, in my opinion. I’ve had my Coolermaster ATCs for 3 years now, and it is still the champ in my household. Until they show some improvement on the usability front, they are persona non grata around here.