Aerocool Cylon Mid-Tower Chassis Review (Page 7)

Case Build & Finished Product

The front of the Cylon looks just the same as when we unboxed it without the system powered on. No significant change until you start your rig and the RGB kicks on.

The motherboard and internal components installed with ease, although you may want to pre-run the EPS 8 pin if you do not want to run it over the motherboard front where it can be seen. The space allocated for the pass-through is not substantial enough to support the installation post motherboard install. I was a bit surprised to see how well the cables were hidden in this value chassis as a full-length ATX motherboard would fill even more space and allow more to be hidden, but overall the build went together quite cleanly.

Here we see all of the ports populated as needed for components. The GPU slotted in and the motherboard I/O taking over the previously open rectangle. The PSU went in place with no significant hiccups as well. The only note is to check the slot covers you are breaking away as they cannot be reinstalled to cover a slot if you end up not needing to install a card in that location. There are aftermarket slot covers, but a little caution goes a long way here.

The cable management section is where I can say I am probably most impressed. Most cases in the sub $50 price range tend to be a total disaster to build and manage. The Cylon bucks this tradition and offered not only a reasonably simple cable management experience but also enough room to make it look reasonably tidy.

As you can see the main 24-pin ATX cable needed to be routed to the horizontal cutouts since the motherboard covered the standard vertical pass-through. As you can see we even creatively used the SSD mount pop out holes to run a couple of cables to come through closer to the board which helped with the more tidy cable management. One last thing to note is that as I worried about the CPU cooler backplate cutout and its slanted nature means accessing the rear of the socket will be problematic in the Cylon, so mount whatever you can before installation.

The Cylon when built looks pretty sleek, and for those unassuming, it could pass for a much higher-end case as you see here, it simply looks pretty although the acrylic window panel does scratch super easy so you must take special care.

What do you see? Without TG all dark? Lights? LEDs (HDD/power)? Can you hear anything while running idle? How close do you have to be to hear something? What is making the noise? Now we power the rig on, and I have to give Aerocool credit here, in pictures, this thing can look great, and the front RGB is quite nice with its options of solid colors, effects, and even rainbow flow patterns. If you did not know any better at a glance, this chassis also looks like it could be fitted with a tempered glass panel.