Usage
When you plug in the power to the system you will hear a loud beep. Now if you look at the front bezel of the case it will be illuminated with a Bgears logo and the power button. That’s right, these are touch-sensitive buttons! Once you power on the system the hard drive LED will illuminate as well as the reset button, pretty cool.
To give you an idea of how the touch-sensitive buttons work I made a short video of them in action.
Having windows on such a small case is really cool actually, the blue LED fan really lighs up the right side of the case. I think I’m going to have to pickup some small cold cathodes to totally fill out the system.
Also upon using the case for about a week I was susprised to find out that the CF reader did not work. The slot where you put the card in was unusually short. When I would put my CF card into the slot the red light would turn on like it was reading the card, but nothing showed up in Windows, even in disk management. The SD slot of the card reader worked fine though.
Final Thoughts
I am quite happy with the b-Envi being my new case. Some of the things I really like about it is the ability to fit a full ATX power supply inside. I didn’t want to have to buy another power supply for this case and most smaller power supplies are not modular and I didn’t want to have to mess with all of the extra cables. Also you have windows on each side of the case, it is definitely cool being able to look over at the case and see everything cramped inside. Finally the touch-sensitive buttons on the front bezel are a nice addition and add a “cool” factor to the case.
I was a little disappointed when the top panel did not go back on correctly. This is why I do not like the single panel design on cube cases, because more often then not this happens. If this case had a top and 2 side panels I would be totally sold on it! Also the CF card slot on the card reader no working was also disappointing since I wanted to free up a USB slot by not using my external card reader.
The b-Envi sells online for about $90 which is what I would pay for a case like this. That puts it on par with the Thermaltake Lanbox lite and priced below all other cube-style cases. Overall ThinkComputers gives the Bgears b-Envi mATX Cube Case an 8 out of 10 score.
Pros:
– Removable motherboard
– Side panel windows
– Touch-sensitive buttons
– Fits full ATX power supply
Cons:
– Top panel did not go back on correctly
– CF card reader did not work
