Installation

Are you fed up with seeing case reviews that omit the most important step; that of actually installing components? Well, we here at Hardwarecanucks are drawing a line in the sand and all of our case reviews have a full installation done so we can get you all the gory details of sharp corners and bruised egos during the sometimes long and arduous installation process. In our opinions, a review of a case which doesn't cover the ease or lack thereof of installing components is like having a graphics card review without the game benchmarks.

That being said, you will notice this installation section is quite short when compared to some other cases we have reviewed in the past. This is because installing a system into the Hiper Anubis is nothing short of a dream come true. All of the directions are laid out on a single page instruction sheet and there were hardly any speed bumps encountered. To make a long story short, installing everything into the Anubis took less than 20 minutes with a bit of cable routing included. There was however some highlights which should be made.


What you see above and to the left is the floppy drive cradle that slips into the top part of the front panel. While it is easy to take out, it proved to be a near impossibility to fit back into the front of the case. It must be lined up JUST right in order for it to slide back in.

Another minor design annoyance for me was the fact that of the two DVD drives we tried, (one Samsung and one Pioneer) neither of them would have their face plate sitting flush with the front panel of the Anubis. This is only a minor caveat but with an enclosure as sleek as the Anubis, this seems to be a bit of a design faux pas.


The hard drives are a real joy to install since most of them slide right into the drive cage without any hassle. Notice I said “most”? Of the three types of drives I had on-hand, the Seagate Barracuda and the Western Digital Caviar had no problems with fitment while the lone Samsung Spinpoint 250GB drive nearly didn’t fit. The only way it could be installed into the cage was by pushing it with more force than I will comfortably put on a drive for fear of it being broken. When a hard drive was installed, the rubber rails within the cage proved very capable of absorbing any vibrations from the drive.


Here is an area which I alluded to before and it presents a bit of an annoyance to me again and again. For some reason, Hiper has decided to go with break-off expansion slot covers. Basically once they come off, they will not be reinstalled short of some duct tape, epoxy or a few spot welds. I have to say this is a disappointment for a case which costs this much. The problem is that if you switch graphics cards from one with a dual slot cool to a single slot affair you will be left with a nice hole in the back of your case which is an open invitation to dust. Maybe there is some way for these expansion slot covers to be reinstalled but for the life of me, I couldn’t find a way.


And here is the final product!! There is more then enough space to fit my 8800GTS card with plenty of room to spare if I wanted to install something longer like an 8800GTX or HD2900XT. You can also see that cable routing is pretty easy with a ton of nooks and crannies to hide all of the cables. Granted, we used a modular power supply which simplifies the whole process but I wanted to see how a longer than normal power supply fit. All in all, the installtion process was a breeze and the final result is no less stunning than the exterior of the case. Indeed, you can see here that the Anubis is massive for a mid-tower case.