Hiper Osiris Mid-Tower Case Review

Installation

Before we go through our usual process of showing you how we went about installing components into the Osiris, a mention has to be made about the general installation process. While everything is well laid out, I personally can’t stand a case layout with a bottom-mounted power supply. This is just my personal opinion and I know plenty of people out there who love this type of layout since it offers them a good amount of flexibility when installing components. Unfortunately, a layout such as this has to be executed perfectly for it to be a viable option in my books and while Hiper did a great job with the Osiris, as you will see the execution could have been better. Let’s get moving with this so you can see what I am talking about.

Here are the components which were installed:

CPU: Q6600 w/ Thermalright Ultra Extreme & Noctua NF-P12 1300RPM fan
Motherboard: ASUS Blitz Extreme
Memory: 4x1GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 1800Mhz
Graphics Card: EVGA GTX 280
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 320GB
Power Supply: Silverstone DA850



To begin installation, we installed the motherboard in order to make sure that the side panel would close with the oversized Thermalright Ultra Extreme heatsink installed onto the CPU. Luckily for us and Hiper the side panel closed without any problem at all and there was actually a good ¾” to spare. Installing the motherboard went without a hitch with all of the standoffs attaching with a minimum of fuss but we soon encountered a few issues which were due to the bottom-mounted power supply…


I’ll be honest with you here: attaching or installing anything into the upper left-hand corner of the motherboard is a bloody nightmare in this case. As you can see, due to the proximity of a large heatsink to the top of the case, I gave up on installing the screw into the standoff (yes, even with a magnetic screwdriver) since there is zero space to work. Luckily, this didn’t cause a short but it is NOT recommended; either don’t install the standoff or try to work around your heatsink.

The same thing goes for attaching the fan and 8-pin power supply connector. With the TRUE installed you will get some cuts trying to install a power connector but with a Scythe Ninja installed, it is next to impossible. This is due to the fact that a standard enclosure gives you room to work with before the power supply is installed but this one has you fighting with the roof of the case or the pre-installed fans from the very beginning. To avoid this, make sure you plan very well what you will be putting in this case.

Note: with a modular 8-pin CPU cable this becomes a lot easier since you can attach the connector to you motherboard, install the board and only then attach the cable to you power supply. We showed you this situation to illustrate the situation many of you will encounter.


The next step was to install the power supply and the graphics card. Seeing a long card like the GTX 280 fitting into the Osiris with plenty of room to spare is definitely an amazing sight and we really have to give credit to Hiper for making a mid-tower case with this kind of interior room. It should also be noted that there is plenty of room for all those extra large power supplies on the market as well. While there isn’t enough room on the floor of the case to install a 2-fan radiator, there is more than enough space to store any unused cables.


One of the main complaints with the Anubis case was the fact that the hard drive cage was designed with very tight tolerances so some hard drives would fit while others wouldn’t. Well, Hiper listened to everyone’s cries of pain and slightly modified the cage’s rubber drive rails so the previously uninstallable Samsung Spinpoint 250GB drive fit without any problems.


Installing drives into the 5.25” bays is a simple matter of sliding in the drive fro the front and attaching the necessary thumb screws. Then, once the hard drive cage is put back in, all you have to do is push the front panel back onto the case