Introduction:

IKONIK Zaria A10 Case & Vulcan 850w Power Supply

IKONIK is another company that is a new experience for me. Given the opportunity to check out some of their products, I headed over to their website to check them out.  It is clear that they concentrate on power supplies and cases. Their top end gaming cases have built in water cooling, but more interestingly, they also have a proprietary control system (SIM) for the cooling and monitoring systems in their cases.

IKONIK Zaria A10

Little bent

Hope it's ok

They have sent the Zaria A10 gaming case. It is a midsized tower, with the standard tool-less access, side window, 120mm, 140mm and dual 80mm cooling fans. It also includes the SIM fan control module.

First Impressions:

Features

Padding

Seemed to work

Well, firstly, when the package arrived on my deck, it looked a little worse for wear, apparently it went through a few games of shipping soccer. The foam packing seems to have been enough defense, though I say ‘seems’ as I am unsure about one spot on the case. The top access port has a thin metal  faceplate that seems to have been bent. I’m not sure if it happened during shipping or directly from the factory. 

Looks good

Port cover

Static covers

Looking at the case overall, and just in my own opinion, it’s not overly showy. It has a clean brushed aluminum finish with a few chrome highlights. Except for the side window, it would be well suited for most offices.

Other side

Side fans

Ports uncovered

Back to the top ports, the usual USB/Firewire/audio ports are there and an eSata port is also included. The ports, along with the power button (there is no reset switch) are all covered by a rubber dust cover. Initially I thought the dust cover would get in the way, I didn’t realize it wasn’t bolted down. But there is just a small fairly powerful magnet that holds it in place. I like this method better than some cheap hard plastic door that is more likely to snap after lots of use. It also allows the power button to be pressed while still covering all the ports when it is in place.

Front lights

Front bezel off

Front again

The front bay door is aluminum, but it is held in place and connected to the rest of the chassis by a plastic frame. It is held shut by a small magnet, and the drive bay covers have a very glossy finish, with a small power and hdd access light hidden behind some of the transparent section.

Zaria

Rear fan

Side window

On the right side panel, there is the option between two different windows. One is an open grate for additional airflow; the other is a solid piece of plastic. For my own tastes, I much prefer the grated window, though it does add additional noise.

Cables

HDD rack

Rear PCI

On the other side panel, there are 2 40mm fans with a silver grate cover. The positioning of the fans isn’t great however. It is almost guaranteed that at least one of them will be almost entirely covered by the power supply. And most, if not all power supplies don’t have any ventilation on that side.

Rear 120mm

Side fans

PCI Latch

The only 2 things that are even remotely noteworthy of the rear of the case, is that there are 2 rubber lines holes for an external water cooling setup and there is a small slot for the PCI latch to slide through. Otherwise you could probably put a picture of a hundred different cases and not know which is which.

Rail mounts

Screws and supplies

Rails stay without drives

Removing the side panel to install a motherboard reveals a very standard layout. 6 side loading hard drives, 4 optical drive bays and one “Floppy drive” bay that is never going to see a floppy drive.  The optical and FDD bays have a permanently attached latch. After you slide in the drive, pressing the button down locks the drive in place, slide the latch beside it and it unlocks. They work better than a lot of systems I’ve used, but it can be a little finicky if the holes don’t line up perfectly.

Optical mounts

System installed

SIM visible

The hard drive mounting setup uses removable plastic rails. Each rail has 2 rubber nipples that fit in the mounting holes on the hard drive. You then have to hold the raids and hard drive while you slide it into the frame. The plastic rails will stay in place even without a drive, so there are no loose pieces to rattle around or go missing. The rubber also helps to dampen vibration and noise from the drives.

Fan filter

Metal punches

Front cover

The power supply mounts on the Zaria also have some rubber strips for vibration control. It’s also easy to install, because with the small rail and the rubber strips, you don’t have to use 3 hands to hold the power supply in place while you put in the screws.

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