Jeantech Apollo JN8005 Lytham St Annes

Jeantech has a special place in the affections of the CPC staff. Not necessarily because it makes the best products, but because every time we receive something smart from the company, it shows a marked improvement over the previous product. The first Jeantech cases we saw were flimsy affairs. Then, after a short while, the company returned with the Phong, which blew us away with its intelligent design, decent quality and ludicrously low price.

Jeantech has done it again with its Apollo. Like the Phong, it isn't much of a looker but it has charm and, more importantly, potentially great airflow. Ventilation is provided by two 120mm fans in a push/pull configuration that drags cool air in at the front of the case and blasts hot air out of the back. While these two fans should be enough to keep most systems cool, Jeantech has added some other fans, which may be invaluable. The most interesting of these is a single 80mm fan mounted in the top of the case. This fan, however, isn't always on. Like the headlights on sleek sports cars, it pops up when you need it. Press the top of the panel that normally hides it from view, and you release a switch that applies power to the fan.

In addition to the extra 80mm exhaust fan, there are two intake fans on the side of the case, which reside next to the motherboard's PCI slots, thus forcing cool air into the dead spot just below your graphics card. These mounts are unpopulated, though, and we wouldn't recommend putting fans in unless your PC is overheating.

If all of this sounds too good to be true, well, it is. That sports car sitting in the car park is obviously going to be locked, and all of the Apollo's air intakes are restricted in some way. The front fan is fed by a miniscule slot at the bottom of the door and the side fans have to get by with some very small slots in the side panel.

Although the severely restricted intake apertures compromise the design, the case itself isn't ruined. The fascia is plastic, so you could fashion a much larger slot for an air intake without too much trouble. You may think we're being lenient here; good design doesn't normally necessitate the use of a hacksaw the moment that you get it out of the box. There's a reason for this though: the Apollo is a totally tool-free case. In fact, it seems to be very similar to the SilverStone TJ05 Temjin, which won our last chassis Labs test.

All of the four external 5.25in, two 3.5in and six of the internal 3.5in bays use slide rails, making it a breeze to add and remove drives. You can also add two more hard drives to the side-mounted arm, instead of two 80mm fans.

Adding up to 10 hard disk drives will be noisy, but cooling them shouldn't be a problem, as the 120mm intake fan blows cool air right through the drive cage.

However, good airflow and lots of space for drives aren't all that the Apollo offers. There's also a good deal of gimmickry for the gadget freaks among you, and we particularly like the castors that come with the chassis. Phil's favourite, however, was the blue fan controller that sits behind the silver bling mirror in the fascia. It's nothing special, being a very simple single-colour LCD, but it will control up to three fans and monitor three temperature probes, so it's difficult to complain as far as practicality goes.

CONCLUSION

The Apollo is a practical case: it's big and ugly, but functional. Although there's no noise dampening for the disks, and a distinct lack of airflow to the intake fan, the chassis itself is fundamentally a good design. Being tool-free is a welcome bonus, as are the castors and fan controller.

The only thing that holds us back from recommending it is that you may find yourself needing to cut a larger intake aperture on the underside of the front panel. Otherwise, it's a great chassis for the price.

Author: Josh Blodwell

Jeantech Apollo JN8005