Xclio Touch 787 Super Tower Chassis Review

Introduction

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In the original introduction of the Touch series of cases, I took the angle of how everything that is tech related is going to touch panels in some form or fashion. With anything that gets developed, there is always a guy sitting around thinking, what did we leave out of the first attempt? What could we have done better? What happens if we just go nuts and offer as much as we can in the space allowed with the control panel? To be honest, this is exactly what I see has happened to the new arrivals touch panel, and being the namesake of the chassis series, it is only fitting that it is a bit over the top, and should offer anything they can think to make switchable or selectable at the gentle touch of a finger.

On top of an improved Touch panel of this chassis, we are also moving up in chassis classes. Here we go from the mid-tower design of the Touch 320, skip right over full towers, and deliver a Super Tower chassis! The optical bays stay tool-less, but this time there is a whole new look at HDD mounting. Similar to what I have seen in press releases from Lian Li, Xclio is the first to deliver such an implementation to me. This puts Xclio in the lead for not only the Touch panel, but now they are the first to bring me this! Xclio really appears to be stepping up the game from the chassis I remember getting even a year ago. I really like to see this sort of progress, even if it isn't for everyone, it shows there are some people with really good ideas and concepts and that Xclio isn't afraid to stand out and deliver new things.

Today we are going to be looking at the largest offering of the Touch series of cases, the Touch 787 from Xclio. This case not only offers what I covered already, but the chassis comes with ten 120mm fans with blue LEDs in them to cool and illuminate this chassis. It seems like with the Touch 787 Xclio delivers a case that keeps on giving.

At almost every turn and even right in front of you are some really cool tricks and features to be had. Usually with the second of a series I am over it already, and I am rarely excited or even inclined to want to write what I have found. Most times it is all the same concept in a different flavor. With the Xclio Touch 787, it offers enough to stand on its own and is in no way a new flavor of the original. Instead this is more like the main course where the Touch 320 was just an appetizer!

Specifications, Availability and Pricing

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The all black chassis comes made mostly of SECC steel that makes up the frame and all but the top trim and front bezel. The top trim and front bezel are constructed of black ABS plastic and is shaped to give the chassis an aggressive lean forward. The front, along with the lean, has what appear to be overlapping armor plates going down the entire length with thick columns on either side and it covers the four 3.5-inch bays and the 120mm fan at the bottom. The left side has a large mesh area inserted into the panel and behind it are six fans already installed in this location. On the flip side of the case you will find room for an 80mm or 92mm fan behind the CPU socket while the rest of the panel is textured with the paint and of course black to match the rest. In the back of the chassis you will find room for the PSU, eight expansion slots, four water cooling grommets and one 120mm fan controlled with the touch panel. The last of the ten included fans can be found in the roof of the chassis and all of them are touch panel controlled.

Along with what was just covered, there is the touch panel itself and the front I/O to cover. The touch panel offers two rows of buttons that will give you options for control of the fans power, and if turned on, there is buttons for low, mid, and high speed control. The bottom row offers a mute of the audible confirmation of the touch panel's use, a panel lock, led power control and the PCs power button. In front of those eight buttons you then find the connections for the USB 3.0, USB 2.0, e-SATA, and the pair of 3.5mm audio jacks.

With the exterior well covered, let's move inside. To power the ten fans you will find a pair of controllers on duty in the 787. There is one attached to the door with a Molex and a 2-pin connection to allow for power and case control right on the inside of the left door. The other controller can be found at the base of the motherboard tray. The optical drive bays have tool-lees clips which are nice and all, but the real beauty is found in the hard drive rack, if I can call it that. You can add any combination of up to four 3.5" drives or six 2.5" drives using a dual bay rack attached to the bottom of the chassis. The other four spots are on what I will call wings for now until I can show you. These wings are really cool, and will not only make airflow better inside, but it makes swapping drives much easier as well.

If you are to go to Xclio.com and have a look at the Touch 787, there is a red icon that flashes the word "new" at you, as this chassis was just released. Shopping ends up pretty limited when I get in these sort of situations, and today is no change. As I went shopping via Google, looking up the Xclio touch 787 only leads to one hit currently. That hit would be our old friends at Newegg.com listing $159.99 as the going price to get a Touch 787 to your door. If the pricing for this super tower isn't enough to take you over the edge, maybe the $2.99 shipping is enough to put you over the edge. With what you are about to see included with the Xclio Touch 787, I feel at this point that the price is justified to say the least.

The Packaging

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With a black background, Xclio uses white and teal to make the text and features pop off the box. In the middle is a large image of the Touch 787's control panel and part of the front bezel while down the right side there are four images covering the views of the chassis and a couple of other features.

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Here you will find the panel is topped with Xclio and the chassis mane, while under the handle cut out, there is a full specifications list that covers the chassis offerings, fans, and has the special features listed at the end.

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Saving money by repeating the information on the panels is not something new. As long as the packaging is all that took these hits during shipping, I am a happy camper.

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Just like with the front and back exterior panels, the smaller sides are also a duplicate of each other, so there is nothing really to see here that we haven't already covered.

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Inside of the box, the Touch 787 gets first wrapped in a clear plastic liner to keep the manual, or anything for that matter from rubbing against it. On the top and the bottom of the chassis, Xclio uses Styrofoam caps to center the chassis and give those dents we saw on the back a bit of breathing room to occur. This chassis, even with the damage to the box, arrived in perfect shape.

The Xclio Touch 787 Super Tower Chassis

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You don't quite get a feel for the lean forward from the front, so let's cover the rest. On both sides there is plastic framing around the individual louvers on the front bezel. Each one has an up arrow on it to signify that they just simply lift up and then out of the way. On one louver is the Xclio badge, but this can be moved or removed if you want later.

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Gently setting the case on its face, you can get a good look at the top of the 787. At the top, or back as it should be, there is a pair of 120mm fan attached to the roof. In front of that is a plastic piece the raises the top of the chassis enough for the touch panel and front I/O.

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Figured I should move in a little closer so you can have a better look at the connectivity of the front I/O panel and what the eight touch buttons are for.

Looking at the 787 from the side you now see that aggressive lean I was alluding to earlier. In the removable side panel there is a very large mesh insert, that in the Touch 787 is fully stocked with six 120mm fans lit with blue LEDS.

The rear of the chassis has the typical layout for the components and includes eight expansion slots and four unused grommets to pass water cooling tubing through. You can also see the included USB 3.0 is external as it hangs from the fifth grommet.

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The right side panel is pretty basic, but the Touch 787 does offer room for active cooling to be installed behind the CPU socket, or left empty, still offers passive cooling to that area behind the motherboard.

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Under the chassis there are dust filters for both the PSU area, but for the whole rest of the ventilated floor. In the four corners there are large round plastic feet with rubber pads on them for better traction. The clips near the right and left edges are used with a wire on the hard drive racks I will show you later.

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Before we look inside, I thought the indie of the door was worth a peek. Right up front you see that there is a Molex to power these fans and a 2-pin to control them from the chassis. I do like that the six fans installed also have plastic grills so that wiring doesn't get into these fans.

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Looking a bit closer, we can see that these six fans fill up the control units fan connections. The blue and white wires are the signal wires, while the four at the bottom are to supply these fans with clean power at the source.

Inside the Xclio Touch 787 Super Tower Chassis

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On the inside of the 787 you are hit first by the large hardware box strapped to the motherboard tray, and the PSU strap and bright colored wiring at the bottom of the case. Then as your eyes move right, you see the optical drives, but likely, you aren't quite sure what is going on for hard drive bays yet.

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There are four 5.25" bays in the 787, three of them have tool-less locks and the bottom one will require screws. To be honest, the top bay is pretty much a wash as the wiring from the touch panel blocks a drive from going in. On the lighter side, shorter bay devices will work fine there.

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The hard drive area consists of a dual stack cage on the floor for a pair of 2.5" drives and a pair of wings. The "wing" as I am calling it allows drives to install on their sides horizontally. These can hole either a pair of 3.5" drive or a pair of 2.5" drives each.

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Removing three screws and releasing a latch at the top, the wing comes out and down, supported by the plastic legs at this end, and the wire which I didn't have supporting this. These wings also sport rubber grommets to minimize vibrations.

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The motherboard tray offers plenty of places to tie wiring behind it, and five larger wire management holes around it. The large CPU access hole will work for most boards, but the bottom doesn't go as low as others I have seen in the past.

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I thought this was a good time to look at the top and rear of the chassis from the inside. Again the fans all have grills covering them and these three 120mm fans plus the one in the front are all controlled with the second box like what we found on the door.

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From the factory, all of the wiring from the top of the case is wrapped together behind the tray and just dumps into the lower section of the chassis. Here there is everything from the power and control wire for the fan controller to the power, reset, LED, USB 2.0 and Audio connections just sort of spilling out.

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There is a roughly 20mm of room behind the tray, depending on where you measure, but for wiring purposes, this is all you get. The way the chassis is designed most of the wiring tends to want to naturally hide between the two hard drive wings anyways.

Accessories and Documentation

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I had to laugh a little bit when I opened the hardware box. While I do appreciate that the bag isn't left recklessly floating around in the chassis, these must be boxes they had on hand. For some reason this box implied it would have more than just this small bag of screws and other hardware.

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Packed into that bag is a full assortment of the large hard drive screws that work specifically with the wings and grommets found there. There is also the motherboard and PSU mounting screws and the smaller screws for 2.5" drive installation or 5.25" devices. You also receive a motherboard speaker, a padlock loop and screw, eight rubber washers and three wire ties.

This multi-lingual manual takes you from the parts list and basic disassembly of the 787 on to the more intricate use of the hard drive system employed here, a couple of which I want to point out in the following images.

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The first of which is the installation and use of the PSU support strap. The use of nylon as the strap material and Velcro to fasten it, the strap is very easy to feed through the chassis and use.

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The second part I found very helpful was this brief but very informative page pertaining to the hard drive wings. It shows what holes are used for 2.5" drives and which holes allow 3.5" drives. If the grommets used with 3.5" drives are in the wrong location, they are easily removed and relocated to your specific needs.

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Just to show how they go on, I added a 3.5" drive for another rig, but the 2.5" drive will remain inside as it is the boot drive for the 990FX UD7 setup. Keep in mind, 3.5" drives use the grommets and the odd screws, any 2.5" drives mount directly to the steel wings.

The Build and Finished Product

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I would have liked to install the DVD drive into the top slot so I wouldn't break up the louvers. I found that due to the wiring from the touch panel, this is not an option. However, the tool-less clip worked flawlessly, and the break isn't all that horrendous.

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Packed with all my components, the super tower is brought down to size. There is plenty of room for the motherboard, cards, and the PSU to go in with little effort. With the hard drives, keep in mind that there isn't a fan grill on the front fan, and I wish there was one, as the wiring naturally wants to be here.

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Here is the wing I showed earlier, just now it has been relocated and the latch is set to lock it in place. You can replace the three screws, but this rack stays in place fine without them, and it makes later use much easier.

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Aside from the colorful I/O shield, four DVI ports, and the southbound end of a northbound power supply, the obvious thing left is to plug in the external USB 3.0 wire into the rear I/O so that you have it for the front I/O. I would have expected this to be a 20-pin internal connection.

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Behind the scenes I didn't do too much. It is always easier to route the 8-pin behind the board, and the 787 allows this rather easily. The rest is up to you as most of the wiring is already up front.

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I just wanted to show you how the grill in the right side panel lines up with the socket of my motherboard. While mine isn't the golden rule, it is good to see that adding a fan here would do what it is intended for, cooling the back of the CPU socket.

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Here is the Xclio touch 787 ready for power with everything packaged back up, doors placed on, and hopefully wired correctly inside. Now, where did that power cord get to?

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When the chassis is first powered, there is an audible beep noting you did so. At this time the entire touch panel illuminates, but the fans in the chassis start to spin at half speed with dim LED lighting at this stage.

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After just a second or two, the Xclio Touch 787 comes to life, and the glow of blue LED is everywhere. The bright glow out the door, the roof, and the rear are sure to add a blue cast throughout the room. Down the front there isn't much in the way of lighting, at least until the very bottom. There are two lights designating power while a third one will flicker with hard drive activity.

Final Thoughts

The touch series cases have now not only added simplicity with the touch controls for the power of the PC, the LED lighting, power of the fans, three various speeds, silencing the beep, and even locking the control panel are all just as easy as a soft touch for a second on the appropriate button. At first, what I thought was just going to be a larger rendition of the 320 we just looked at, I am pleasantly surprised to see that the ideas and implementation of those ideas are still coming from Xclio as they keep pace with other solutions, just in a different manner. Most cases in this price range offer some sort of removable hard drive racks, and Xclio does too. When the drive racks are in place, even then the orientation of the drives is just so natural to allow airflow and ease of access to then drives with just the release of a clip.

While I would have liked to have seen a USB 3.0 20-pin connection on this case, at least we do still get USB 3.0 in the front I/O, even if it does take up one from the rear I/O to do so. There weren't any real fit issues, but I must say these door panels are some of the tightest fitting panels I have seen in a while. It really took some force to remove the panel, and when re-installing it, I had to really force them back in place as well. The only real downside that I can speak of, and I better do it with the case off, is the noise level of these included fans. I thought the Touch 320 was a bit loud for my tastes, double the fans, and you can imagine things don't get any quieter. While the fan speed is adjustable, on high speed, the noise is too much for me to personally like it. If I were to use this chassis the fans wouldn't make it past low speed. Even then the ten included fans offer plenty of air at low speeds to sufficiently cool the interior and my components.

Both the noise levels and the limited availability are going to affect the final score, but they can always improve the amount of stock available for the Touch 787 over time, so don't take that hit to the score into effect really. What we are left with, bottom line, is a super tower chassis that has a lot of the latest in features while adding a few new ones, packaging it in an aggressive looking façade, and delivering this chassis at a respectable price point. I have to say that Xclio offers everything basic and advanced users would want, and with the Newegg.com listing of $159.99, the Xclio Touch 787 is enough case to stand tall in a segment of cases that is heavily populated already.

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