Overclocker Cafe - X-Dreamer II Case

X-Dreamer II Case

Taking a look at the front we see that the layout here has stayed the same. The front bezel is plastic with a clear acrylic cover. The LED display is the same with the power and reset buttons located at one and five o'clock respectively with the power and HDD LED's opposite them.

Below the display are the vent holes for the front intake fans. I still think that these were designed pretty well as they blend in with the case. And of course, right there is that neat little door that hides the USB, speaker and mic ports too.

And while I am aware that these doors are nothing new, I still can't help but be impressed that they are included in what is being billed as a "budget" case.

Another item that I would not have expected to see in a budget case that remains the same are the two drop down doors which cover the 5.25" drives.

These make it unnecessary for you to have to do your own stealth drive mod. Just pop the face plate off your drive, slide it in place and everything matches. A nice feature to have on a beige case, but with a colored model such as ours, it's almost a must have.

On the original X-Dreamer, the front of the case had six decorative screws on the outside of the acrylic cover. This is one of the changes with the X-Dreamer II.

They've replaced these with a button type design. But wait... these aren't just any type of buttons. They are UV reactive as well, very slick indeed. Not to worry, we'll get some good pictures for you after we get it running.

The motherboard side of the case also has a slight change to it as well. Instead of having the vent holes for the case down at the bottom, they have been moved up and forward. While they won't provide a lot of extra airflow, every little bit helps.

Moving around to the rear, we see another small but noticeable change. The speaker and mic ports for this case are connected to a jack which plugs into your existing sound ports on the rear of the computer (onboard sound/sound card). Originally, these ports were plugged into the extra headers on your mainboard.

Here we see that Aspire has included a PCI bracket with a cutout for the sound plug-in to run through. There are both pros and cons to each of the methods of hooking the front panel sound up. With this exception, the back of the case has remained the same. We can see the included PSU up top. To the side of the motherboard I/O plate, are the fans grills for two more 80mm fans.

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