Cases of note, and things in cases previewed

IT IS time to sort through the inbox and bring you the things that caught my eye, with cases coming to the forefront. This time, we have a bunch of things from Coolermaster, Monarch, Voodoo and iGoLogic, with the last two being cases with things in them.

So, Coolermaster has a new motif for the active fragger on the go, the Ammo 533. While I am not sure where the 533 came from, it is supposed to be styled like an ammo box, but again, I don't see it. Luckily it doesn't look bad, in fact it is a fairly different look without being offensive in any way, aluminium with rubberised corners and a sturdy handle. Worth a look.

Next up, we have an interesting case, the GameRiot branded Monarch Hornet, or to be more formal, the Monarch Hornet Pro GameRiot Monster Special Edition System. This report is being typed on the last generation Hornet, and you can read a review of it here, so you could say I like the chassis. This one isn't much more than a Hornet with a spiffy decal job, but it is really spiffy. Check it out, it is quite, umm, toothy.

This brings us to a slightly more up scale case, without teeth, but with a size and shape that would fit into a stereo cabinet, the Voodoo Aria. Aria is an upscale MCE PC with a built in LCD in the front panel, but that is old hat these days. The nouveau chapeau part is that it is offering the new ones with Turions to lower the power use, and therefore cooling, and therefore fan noise, so it actually is useable in a media centre config. More importantly, it puts in a DVD archival system so you can clear out the older stuff from your hard drive without deleting it.

The last case is the polar opposite of the Aria, it is the iGoLogic JBOX, a Sun Ray diskless workstation. This little box is a Via EPIA based Solaris 10 workstation. If you are familiar with the Sun Ray concept, it is basically a stateless Solaris and Java workstation, you log on, and your desktop follows you around. Nothing is stored on the workstation, so when you log out, no security worries. It is the perfect combo for an EPIA board, powerful enough, and inexpensive. If you are running Solaris at your shop, check it out. µ