Introduction

Nexus is mostly known by us enthusiast for their highly acclaimed silent 120mm fans, we tested their most popular model some time ago, the D12SL-12 came out near the top of best noise/performance fans. So when Nexus decided to increase their product range to include ATX cases, we were pleased to see them including this same fan for cooling. Our review subject today is the Caterpillar ATX case, build for silence it’s a compact structure with foam padding inside and soft rubber feet, all measures taken to reduce noise.



Specifications



The Caterpillar is small mid-tower case, but Nexus managed to include 6x 3.5” bays (1 exposed) and 3x 5.25” bays. Front I/O has USB, sound and firewire, while cooling is taken care of by 2x120mm fans. No PSU is supplied by default so you’ll have to match one that fits your system requirements.

The construction is made from sturdy steel; this increases overall weight to 8.4kg, not too bad, but with all components inside, no light-weight either.

Size comparison

Comparing the Caterpillar to the other cases we have reviewed in the past it’s no surprise that height wise this mid-tower is one of the smaller contenders. While this does limit the expandability options and/or water-cooling inside the case installs, for most systems, the diminutive size will not pose a problem.

Compared to a 1m80 human, here’s how the cases stack up in height and width:



The remaining size specification, depth, is most important for high end VGA cards and you’ll see here that the Caterpillar is far from the smallest:



Outside look

This case is a no frills product, the Caterpillar comes in none obtrusive color and looks quite boring to be honest:



But no worries, looks aren’t everything, and at the end of the day, do you stare at your PC case or your monitor when you’re working at your PC? The Caterpillar aims to make your PC dead silent (if you use the correct components inside) so less obtrusive visual and audible might be a good idea.

The rear of the case reveals already a bit of the inside structure, with the PCI slots at the top and PSU at the bottom:



The front I/O is hidden beneath a plastic panel which you open by slightly pushing down on it:



The front panel is made of two parts, one slides behind the other to allow you access to the 5.25” drive bays. The metal mesh and holes behind it can be clearly seen when taking a photo with flash:



This mesh is sufficient to stop larger dust/cat hair, no smaller filters are installed though. Here’s a small movie displaying the front panel sliding compartment:

Look Inside

Only the right side panel can be removed, the left on is riveted to the chassis, no (thumb)screws needed to remove the side panel, 2 plastic switched need to be pushed to unlock the panel; afterwards you slide it from the rest of the case.

First thing you’ll notice is the foam padding inside the Caterpillar, it’s installed on all largest metal surfaces, sides top and bottom.





The amount of goodies includes with the case is limited, you get an installation manual, and this small bag of screws:


(click the image to see clear overview © Nexus)


Cooling

You get one 120mm silent fan in the front:



And one at the back:



Both have a 4-pin and 3-pin power connector, and as you can see, these fans are situated at the bottom of the case. A good thing for the front in-take, since cooler air is at the lowest point in a room, but not ideal for the rear exhaust, since hot air will be trapped at the top of the case.

Installation next ->

Installation

Nexus designed the Caterpillar with a few tool less features, one I had not seen before were the “motherboard thumbscrews”, these plastic tubes with small screw at the end help secure the motherboard easily and quickly.

Other areas like the drive bays require screws, the 5.25” devices are secured at one side:



The hard drives are installed in the lower bay and require screws at the top and bottom. This bay sits in the middle of the bottom of the case, while there was no issue installing the HDDs inside this bay, the free space at the rear of the bay is limited.

This means a large PSU will most likely not fit inside this case, the Coolermaster Real Power M520 Modular PSU fits barely, with the cables deforming the HDD bay:



The PCI slots feature a tool-less clip system which works wonderful with single slot devices, however if you have a dual slot video card (like a 8800 GTX) you’ll have to remove the plastic bridge in the middle of two, for the card to fit:



The Caterpillar is quite large in depth, so the Geforce 8800 GTX fitted nicely, although there is not much room left between it and the Plextor DVD writer:



This last photo shows you the soft rubber feet of the Caterpillar and ventilation holes at the bottom of the HDD cage:



Onto the testing ->

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 Coolermaster Real Power M520 520W PSU Western Digital 74Gb Raptor SATA HDD Maxtor 200gb 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:



Cable routing




Your best bet is to stick to SATA hard drives, modular medium sized power supply, and no SLI setup; otherwise the internal airflow path will be completely blocked by the cables mess, as there is little room to navigate the HDD power and data cables without blocking the airflow.

Time for performance stress tests ->

Performance Results

We compared the performance of this new case with the results obtained from the previously tested enclosures, the Nexus was configured with its two 120mm fans running at 12v, they remain quite silent at this speed, providing enough airflow.

We configured the system in its default configuration, the first stress test immediately exposed a heating problem inside the case, since the rear exhaust is situated at the bottom, all hot air which is at the top is trapped, now place a high end VGA card at this location and you run into overheating issues. With the 8800 GTX running at 100% fanspeed the system was definitely not silent; thus we tried two different alternations to the default configuration to see if they can have a positive impact on the performance.

We removed all the PCI brackets at the rear, this way hot air can escape near the top.

We turned the case upside down, by doing this the configuration inside is standard ATX layout, PSU at the top, VGA at the bottom.



When the system was running idle, we measured 42dBA at ~50cm from the front panel, by using a passive CPU cooler (Scythe Ninja, Thermalright HR-01, …) and 3rd party VGA cooling we’re sure the noise level can be lower still.

Here are the performance results:



The results are ranked by maximum CPU temperature obtained, going by this variable the Caterpillar does quiet good, able to keep the CPU cooler than most larger cases, even those which have faster fans and make more noise. HDD temperatures are very good too, since the HDD bay sits right in front of a 120mm in-take we weren’t expecting anything less.

The only real downside as you’ve no doubt noticed is the VGA GPU temperature, in the default config it reached a new high of 95°C, that’s 16°C higher than the 2nd hottest case tested yet. We would not recommend running any high VGA inside this case without adding extra cooling or doing some modifications (a top blowhole would work wonders).

Checking the results of the alternative configurations we can see that by simply removing the rear PCI brackets the GPU temperature drops to 90°C, still too high (and noisy). Lastly by turning the case upside down the temperature drops another 1.5°C, but it’s clear that the lack of the direct airflow to the VGA compartment inside the case is causing these above average temperatures.

Conclusive Thoughts

Nexus is selling this case in US for ~$120 which is a tad on the high side compared to similar sized cases. In Europe prices noticeably lower, listed at ~€70 at the time of writing, which is a very interesting offer.

Installation is straight forward as Nexus provides a few useful tool less features, do note that choosing/having compatible hardware is a must for this case; PSU size is important (smaller=better), SATA HDD drives are preferred to keep cable mess to a minimum. We don’t recommend running any high end VGA card inside this case unless you provide 3rd party cooling or modify the case. CPU cooling is excellent though and overall component cooling is above average inside the Caterpillar.

Nexus told us they’ll have a new case coming out which is build to house high end components, the Caterpillar as it currently stands does an admirable job to keep vibration and high pitched noises to a minimum, just don’t use for your next high end gaming system.

As you saw above, pricing can differ a lot, and this can make or break the success of this case, at €70 this case is definitely competitively priced and with the added noise reduction features and high quality case fans a good deal. However in the USA you’ll pay up to $120, which is simply too much if you take into account that larger and cooler (literally and figuratively) enclosures can be had for less.



We like to thank Dennis from Nexus Netherlands for letting us test their latest enclosure, we hope to review their upcoming high end enclosure with good outcome in the near future.