Introduction

Revoltec is a new brand marketed by the German based Listan Group. Listan Group is also responsible for the popular PSU series called “Be Quiet!”. Today we have Revoltec’s latest product in for test, a mid tower ATX case with stylish design at an attractive price.

The Zirconium RT-101 is available in silver or black and is made of 0.8mm steel panels, making it a solid case. It has good expandability and room to fit higher end gear.



The case is shipped in a cardboard box, as most PC products are, with good quality photos on the outside to give you an idea of the looks of the product inside, as well as the features.



The Zirconium arrived in mint condition with no sign of damage from transport; as you can see on the photo above, the Zirconium most unique features are the side panel in-take and front panel design with top USB/firewire/audio ports.

Specifications

Straight from the packaging, here are the features:



The case is delivered without PSU, so you can add one that will fit your exact needs, you get a 120mm exhaust fan and room to install another one in the front, but only 1 fan is included. The side panel features a plastic air duct which is situated over the CPU area on the motherboard. With total weight over 8kg (and this without PSU or system inside) it’s not a light-weight, but still do-able for LAN party goers.

Let’s compare the size of this case with others ->

Size Comparison

In our past reviews we used a 2L coke bottle to give you an idea of the size of the case, but the simple pixel diagram seems to be doing a better job at that. In the overview below you can find the Revoltec Zirconium compared to other mid-sized tower cases we have already tested.



The RT-101 is similar in size to the NZXT Adamas, it’s definitely a mid-size case as it’s dwarfed by the larger tower cases from Coolermaster and Silverstone.

Outside

The RT-101 features a side panel with air duct installed, in the photo below you can see that this air duct is situated over the CPU cooler area of the mainboard.



The side panels are easily removable as they are fixed in place by thumbscrews.



The front panel is made from hard plastic, with grill texture on the sides.



The optical drives are hidden by use of this flip down 5.25” bay covers of which are two.

A look inside

Removing the right side panel gives you access to install all your hardware inside. No removable motherboard tray here, but enough room to maneuver. The in-take in the right side panel extends towards the CPU area through the use of this plastic duct. The duct can be extended about ~10cm and provides the CPU heatsink with fresh air. In our system we’re using a tower CPU cooler (Coolermaster Hyper TX) which doesn’t work with this duct, removing it was easy by use of 4 plastic push pins.



Without the side panel we get our first glimpse inside, nothing out of the ordinary at first sight. The motherboard back panel curves up to connect with the 5.25” bays. The bottom hard drive rack also serves as a place to keep the plug and play clips for installing the HDD and CD drives. In front of the hard drive rack there is room to install an optional 120mm for in-take. The out-take fan is 120mm and has a Revoltec sticker on it. The case features a case-intrusion switch making it an office-friendly product.



The top 5.25” bay is occupied by the PCB plate holding the different I/O ports which pop up at the top of the case. The cables are long enough to reach the connectors on the motherboard.



Revoltec has eye for detail, as they protected this sharp edge with a rubber cap to prevent injury.



The HDD bay holds all the clips need to slide the CD/HDD in place without the use of tools.



The other tool-less feature of the Zirconium RT-101 is for adapter cards (AGP/PCI/PCIe/…), not a new system by any news, but one that has proven to be effective without too much hassle to use.



To reduce vibration noise, other case manufacturers have been using very soft feet, unfortunately those on the RT-101 are made from hard plastic:

Cooling

The Zirconium offers several ways to cool down the hardware inside. You start out with the pre-installed 120mm, Revoltec “Air Guard” which is rated at 1200rpm. Optionally you install a second 120mm fan in the front. Your third option is to swap the air duct in the side panel with an 80mm fan, something which we don’t recommend doing.



To be able to reach the front fan holder you need to remove the HDD cage, which can be done by removing a couple of screws. Not quite plug and play but swapping out case fans is not a daily routine for most.



The RT-101 features a dust filter for the front fan in-take, to be able to access it you need to remove the front panel. This requires some force to be able to pull the plastic frame from the metal one.

Once removed you can access the dust filter easily:



Installation

With the front panel removed we now also have access to the 5.25” bays to install an optical drive, two different rails can be snapped on the device, one set for installation in the normal bays, the other set is for the “hidden” bays which flip open.



While not necessary for a good fit of long 5.25” devices, you can screw the drive rail to the chassis, this will come in handy for half-length 5.25” products like fan controllers.

Installation continued

Installation of the motherboard was straight forward, place the stand offs on the motherboard tray then position the mobo correctly and screw tight in place. The HDD and CD slid easily into their desired position with the help of the drive rails. Everything was going smoothly until we tried to install the graphics card.

Since the Zirconium RT-101 is a mid tower case large graphics cards cause a compatibility problem; as you will see in the photo below, the 8800 GTX from NVIDIA is too long to fit correctly inside the case, the only way to fit this VGA card it to remove the lower hard drive bay.



As the 8800 GTX is a dual slot video card, the tool-less installation doesn’t work, you need to remove the plastic clips (takes 3 screws) in order to install the VGA card in the traditional fashion.



The photo above showcases our first test setup with the NVIDIA 8800 GTX, the hard drive was installed in the floppy drive location; not the ideal setup, but it works.

Realizing that not everybody will be using this case to pair up with the highest end VGA cards, we swapped the 8800 GTX with a more modest 7900 GT model. Length was no issue now and we installed the system as intended, using the tool-less PCI bracket holder and lower hard drive cage:



There was a lot of room available to hide the cables, a few zip-ties located here and there could streamline this procedure to improve airflow inside the case.

Onto our test setup ->

Test Setup and Test Methodology

Intel Test Setup
CPU	Intel Core 2 E6400 @ 2.8Ghz (from CSMSA)
Cooling	Coolermaster Hyper TX
Mainboard	Intel 975X Bad Axe (Modded by Piotke)
Memory	2 * 1Gb PC6400 OCZ
Other	XFX Geforce 8800 GTX Antec TruePower Trio! 650W Western Digital 74Gb Raptor SATA HDD

Room temperature was 20°C during testing, ambient noise clocked in at 37.8dBA. Noise measurements were taken at 50cm from the front of the case.

Realtime HDR and Orthos were used to stress the Dual Core system; Core 2 Temp was used to monitor Core temperature (duh) and Speedfan to check the temperature of HDD and Motherboard. Rivatuner’s temp monitor checked the G80 GPU at regular intervals. Maximum values were recorded.

The Intel Bax Axe motherboard features several thermal sensors, the “mobo” values are those recorded by the sensor which can be found between the DDR2 memory banks, marked A in the overview:




Onto the stress testing ->

Test Results ~ with NVIDIA 8800 GTX

Our first round of testing pits the Zirconium RT-101 against the similar sized NZXT Adamas, the low price Antec Nine Hundred and other newcomer Sunbeamtech 3D Storm.

We measured temperatures with the default case fan configuration (1x120mm in the rear for exhaust), then we added a low speed and low noise 800rpm (from Noctua) in the front. In chart below R stands for Rear Exhaust, F is Front In-take. Even with the fans at high setting the 1200rpm “Air Guard” in the Zirconium kept relatively silent. While the numbers in the table give the dBA level at maximum system load, the idle noise was lower at only ~43dBA at 50cm. The main reason for the increase in noise is the NVIDIA 8800 GTX stock cooler fan which spins up as the GPU temperature rise inside the enclosure.



The Zirconium keeps up nicely with the Adamas from NZXT. With the default configuration of one rear 120mm fan you can see HDD temps at 36°C, this drops by 4°C when we add a low noise fan in the front, the in-take also has a positive effect on the VGA temps which plummet by 5°C (the fan is still spinning at 100% making a lot of noise).

Test Results ~ with NVIDIA 7900 GT

We did not test many cases with the 7900 GT card, in the comparison below we’ve included the results from the 3D Storm from Sunbeamtech. The NVIDIA 7900 GT is cooled by a low noise Zalman VF900 with its fan at 5v.

The same fan config as before, once with stock config (1x120 in the rear) and once with extra 120mm in-take.



Previous noise levels were at 46+dBA, now they are down to 40.5dBA with the stock configuration, and 41.7dBA with the front fan installed. Performance wise all temperatures are well within safe regions, the hard drive is now installed inside its proper bracket and with a 120mm in front of it, temperatures are as low as 30°C, compared to 38°C without the in-take.

Let’s wrap things up ->

Conclusive Thoughts

The Zirconium from newcomer Revoltec is an example of cost reducing engineering without losing touch with “design”. The chassis of the RT-101 is by no means fancy, it’s made from heavy steel and provides a solid construction, not a lot of compartments or separate plates used here, the more “all-in-one” the better. The only removable items on the case are the HDD rack and front fan filter. A generic PCI tool-less installation feature and HDD/DVD drive rails give the Zirconium a touch of user friendliness. While no removable motherboard to facilitate mobo installation, we didn’t find it necessary as there was enough room to work inside.

The front panel is made from plastic, again, to reduce costs, it incorporates a hidden DVD feature, and when you power on your system you get a cool blue light effect:



Stress testing revealed that the silent rear 120mm fan was unable to keep a high end Geforce 8800 GTX running cool, but if you take into account that this case is available at a price as low as €55 you have to wonder, how many people are going to drop a €500 VGA card in there? If we couple the Zirconium with a VGA card in the same price range, we found the airflow inside the case to be sufficient to keep a 7900 GT running cool, and this at low noise levels.

Revoltec’s first product on the enclosure market is available at a very affordable price, it has excellent cooling if you pair it with mid-range hardware and features enough tool-less features to not make the installation last forever.

We are looking forward to more products from Revoltec who have a higher end enclosure coming out soon. We thank Dorothee for allowing us to stress test the mid-tower case, until next time!