Sky Hawk MSR 4610 Aluminum case

Need a new case for your computer? Lets take a look what Sky Hawk can offer from their line of aluminum cases.

Features:

• Model: MSR-4610
• Full aluminum structure with anodic treatment
• Surface with hairline treatment
• Snap-In front panel design
• 80x80 mm ball bearing fans (front x 1, rear x 1)
• Slide M/B tray
• 5.25-inch x 4 open, 3.5-inch x 2 open, 3.5-inch x 4 hidden
• Seven (7) expansion slots with thumb screws
• Dimensions (DxHxW): 490 mm x 442 mm x 208 mm
• Weight 5 kg without PSU

Front view

Nice clean layout with four visible 5.25 and two 3.5 drive bays. Also visible is multifunction port. Now some details.

Buttons

Leds are standard 3 mm tinted green and led ones. Easy to remove and replace with the colors you want.

Multifunction port

Different models

This case was shipped with E-type panel. There are three different panels available with different connectors.

Cooling

Front fan's grill

Front fan

Front fan is located where it should be, bottom part and blowing air inside the case. Holes provided for the fan are too small and there are too few of them so the air flow is affected and this also produces more noise.

Rear fan's grill

Same goes for the rear fan. Holes are too small and they obstruct air flow.

Side view

Side fans

On the side you'll find two 120x120 mm ball bearing fans that blow to the CPU and add-on cards. Here the holes are too small, too, but that isn't the only problem. There aren't holes on the side panel. These two fans only circulate the air that is already inside the case and by doing this they will mess up the air flow. Would really need holes to the side panel. Also visible is a swing that can hold two 3.5-inch devices.

Drive cages and covers

HD rack

Drive seating

There is an extra HD rack sitting on bottom of the case. Rack is removable and the front fan is placed right in front of it. This will ensure the best possible cooling for the hard drives.

Front bezel fixing

Plastic front bezel is held in place with help of six holders. They were quite stiff so I had to bend them a bit to make them more usable. Before that I had to use flat screwdriver to force front bezel to pop loose.

Bay covers

Bay covers

Aluminum bay covers aren't fixed quite well. They get easily pushed loose. It's nice to see that Sky Hawk decided to make these out from metal and not from plastic and paint them over. Way better for modders.

Top part

Only thumb screws? Not quite. Top cover is held by four screws and two of them are regular ones. Rear screws are thumb screws. Not a big issue because there isn't real need to remove this part so often.

Side panel

This is something that I liked a lot. On the side panels there are hooks that you can use to pull the panels off. Safer for your fingers and faster. Each panel is held in place with two thumb screws.

legs

On the bottom you'll find four turnable legs and holes for speaker.

Motherboard tray

Motherboard tray is removable and it slides out from the back with all the PCI slots etc. This makes the installations of new hardware a lot easier. There is a metal arch for added support but it is not fixed so perfectly on the tray side. All of the card slots use thumb screws so no tools are needed while changing a card. Everything is anodiced on the inside so there shouldn't be any static electricity build up.

Multifuntion port

Multifunction port

Cables

Cables on the rear

To get front ports running you'll need to reserve one card slot for the interface cable. Cable itself is quite thick but is held in place with two plastic wrappers. You then connect this cable to another cable that is connect to the ports on back side of the case. Not so tidy when the installation is finished but this is necessary to hook up all the ports from motherboard.

PSU

300W power supply

Power supply is also made from aluminum. Supply itself is first attached to a "collar" and after that it is ready to be installed and fixed in place with four thumb screws.

Label on PSU

Sky Hawk has two models of supplies available for this case, 300 and 400 watts. Both of them are P4 approved.

Connectors

Seven bigger molex connectors and three power connectors for floppy drives. Should be more than enough for most.

Conclusion

I liked this case a lot. It's good looking, conservative but still trendy. Good amount of 3.5" places for RAID setups and there are more thumb screws than one could wish for. Oh, and did I mention that it included two spare thumb screws? ;)

Additional information