Diablotek Cyclops Mid Tower Case Review

Final Thoughts
I actually had high hopes for this case.  At first glance this case has a pretty cool look to it, comes with 5 cooling fans, is USB 3.0 ready and supports long video cards.  That all sounds great, but when it came time to do the installation on this case things just went downhill.

One of my biggest problems with this case was with the I/O shield installation.  I mean this is supposed to be the easiest part of installing your system right? WRONG!  It literally took me 10 minutes to get my I/O shield to actually stay in place!  I even tried 3 different I/O shields from 3 different motherboards and had the same result.  Once I was able to get the I/O shield in I went to install my motherboard only to find out that the holes in my motherboard did not line up with standoffs.  I took out my motherboard 3 times trying to figure out what the issue was and I came to the conclusion that it was the I/O shield for some reason.  Once I removed the I/O shield I was able to install my motherboard no problem at all.

Moving on to the hard drives.  First you can only install three 3.5-inch hard drives, that is it just three!  That is very limiting as most cases these days give you room for at least 4 if not more.  The fact that you also have to use an adapter to install your 3.5-inch drives is a little weird.  When you install the 3.5-inch drives so they are in front of the intake fan they stick out and can potentially block ports on your motherboard.  There is actually room for two 2.5-inch hard drives in this case.  One can be installed on the bottom of the case and apparently there is a mounting for one right behind the intake fan, although you would never know unless you take a close look at the user’s manual.

Some of the other things that bothered me about this case was that the top most drive bay is completely useless.  It is blocked at the front by the power and reset buttons.  Diablotek even puts a tool-less drive adapter on it to make you think that it can be used.  When  you do install an optical drive it is most likely going to block or partially block one of the cable routing holes.  The holes to mount the power supply did not even line up with our power supply!  It was being held in place by a single screw!

This has to be one of the only cases where I just wanted to be like, “Forget this!” when I was installing the hardware.  There are some good things about this case, but they are not even worth mentioning because I cannot honestly recommend this case to anyone.  With a price tag of around $60-70 there are much better offerings from Cooler Master, Thermaltake and NZXT.  With that said ThinkComputers gives the Diablotek Cyclops Mid Tower Case a 5 out of 10 score.

rating5 10 small

Pros:
– Comes with 5 installed fans
– USB 3.0 compatiable
– Supports long graphics cards

Cons:
– I/O shield does not fit correctly
– Only has support for three 3.5-inch hard drives
– 3.5-inch drives can block motherboard
– Power supply holes did not line up
– Optical drives will block or partially block cable routing holes
– Top most drive bay is completely useless

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