Enermax CS-56881LBFS Case

Beginning with the front bezel, we see that Enermax has taken a new approach to covering your drives.  The front bays are covered by a pull up louver type arrangement as you can see below.  The louvers when fully retracted only allow access to the top three 5.25” drive bays.  Now while many of us don’t have a need to use all four drive bays, belief in usable access to all four can be misleading if you go only by the specs.  I know you are asking, so to satisfy your curiosity, yes the louver can be removed.

     

On the bottom half of the case we see lots of venting holes  broken up into two sections for the front intake.  Between the two sections of vent holes, we see a silver colored power and reset button with your power and hard drive activity lamps positioned between them.  At the very base are two USB ports as well as an audio in and audio out jack.

Moving around to the left side panel, we see a full sized case window.  The window has an ‘X’ shape dividing the viewable areas of the window.  Centered in the middle of this ‘X’ is a 80mm quad LED case fan.  This fan represents the only case fan that comes standard with the CS-5688.

The rear of the case shows off two 80mm blowholes spaces.  Unfortunately, these vent points are opened by lots of drilled holes rather than one large 80mm open hole with a finger guard to cover it.  I have always felt that this type of set up is a little too restrictive of airflow.  The red button mounted onto a PCI slot bracket controls the neon tube inside the case which we’ll get to shortly.  Both side panels are removable and secured via thumbscrews.

  

The roof of the Enermax case shows off more of the cleanly the layered paint job that is interrupted only by the top mounted blow hole.  While we aren’t crazy about the rear venting covers being cut into the case itself, in my opinion this is preferable for a top mounted blow hole.  You can see below the venting as it is cut into the case roof.  This is of course a matter of personal preference but I for one like it.  If you look at this pic closely you will see the reflection of some picture frames on the paint job.  I say that speaks for itself.

 

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