Computing on Demand PC News & Reviews
Sometimes, being a case manufacturer means that you have to do something special to get noticed. It isn’t always the flashy designs or the obnoxious graphics that gets your product known. Sometimes, it is just good craftsmanship and a good design that gets people like me excited. With a slew of case manufacturers out there, Sentey thinks they can get your attention with their Burton Chassis.
If you are one who likes specifications, I can knock those out-of-the-way pretty quickly. The Burton is manufactured from SECC 1mm steel and because of that, there are no sharp edges. The Burton stands 20.47 inches high x 21.65 inches long x 8.43 inches wide, weighs 27.56 lbs., and has room for an E-ATX motherboard. There are 6 fans that come pre-installed, 5 5.25 inch drive bays, 5 internal 3.5 inch hard drive bays, and 7 expansion slots.
The top of the chassis features a mesh fan guard that is home to 2 of the 6 pre-installed fans. These fans are blue LED fans that measure 120mm each and bear no indication of airflow. Up front on the top of the chassis you will find some standard items like your power and reset buttons. You will also find buttons to run or turn off 4 of the installed fans. A notable feature of this chassis is right in front of you when you look at the Burton. There is a sliding door that hides things like the 4 USB ports, the headphone and microphone jacks, an e-SATA port, and a regular SATA power and data connection. This sliding door is very well designed as it slides almost effortlessly (using springs) and feels sturdy enough for regular usage. Directly above the door is a card reader capable of reading CF/MD, XD, SD/MMC, TF y MS/M2 cards.
The idea behind the way Sentey designed the Burton seems to be accessibility. With the configuration of the top panel here, it looks like someone finally caught the hint that tower cases usually end up on the floor under or next to your desk. Thank you, Sentey, for putting the card reader and accessibility ports at the top of the chassis.
The front of the Burton really displays the visual elements behind the design nicely. The mesh accents on the front give the chassis a tough look and the front mesh fan guard hides the third fan, a 120mm blue LED fan. The front bezel is removable and features a filter to keep dust out of the system; however it doesn’t remove very easily. If Sentey had implemented something like Lian Li did with their PC 70, pictured below also, they would have vastly improved the functionality and make this more of a usable feature.
The sides of the chassis are nothing to call home about. They do feature release buttons, so you can easily remove them, but one side panel has this growth like ventilation thing on the side that makes me feel like the Burton needs some radiation therapy.
