The Streacom F12C Aluminum Desktop Case Review
by E. Fylladitakis on September 14, 2015 9:00 AM EST
Introduction
Today we are getting acquainted with a relatively new manufacturer of advanced PC cases, Streacom. The company originates and has its head office set up in Holland, although their manufacturing base is based at, as always, China. For the past few years, the company was focused entirely on premium SFF and passively cooled cases, always made from aluminum. Today we are having a look at their first attempt to diversify a little, the F12C case, which measures in at 44cm long by 18.4cm high, despite looking large in some of these pictures.
The F12C is a desktop case made out of premium grade aluminum, but it neither is a SFF-class product nor passively cooled. It is a premium HTPC case with advanced cooling capabilities and capable of housing up to even Extended ATX motherboards and any ATX PSU. Furthermore, the company is boasting a new and unique mounting system, allowing free choice of where and how internal drives and fans are going to be installed, such as here:
On paper, it sounds as if Streacom designed the perfect modular internal configuration and did so for an HTPC case. We are going to thoroughly examine Streacom's latest and greatest creation in this review.
| Streacom F12C | ||
| Motherboard Size | ATX, Micro-ATX, Mini-ITX | |
| Drive Bays | External | - |
| Internal | Up to 12 × 3.5" (ITX motherboard) Up to 24 × 2.5" (ITX motherboard) |
|
| Cooling | Front | - |
| Rear | - | |
| Top | Variable fans number and sizes (depends on system configuration) | |
| Sides | Variable fans number and sizes (depends on system configuration) | |
| Bottom | - | |
| Radiator Support | Front | - |
| Rear | - | |
| Top | - | |
| Sides | Variable up to 240 mm (depends on system configuration) | |
| Bottom | - | |
| I/O Port | None | |
| Power Supply Size | ATX | |
| Clearances | HSF | 135 mm |
| PSU | - | |
| GPU | 305 mm | |
| Dimensions | 184 mm × 440 mm × 320 mm 7.24 in × 17.32 in × 12.6 in |
|
| Prominent Features | · Premium Grade (6063) All Aluminium Chassis · Remote Control: FLirc or IRRC Solution (Not Included) · Unique Fan/Drive mounting system |
|
| Price | £167 ex VAT (UK. Equivalent to about $300 at the time of this review) | |
Packaging & Bundle
Streacom supplies the F12C Aluminum case in a relatively small but very sturdy cardboard box. The artwork is minimal and essentially reduced to just the company logo. There are no pictures of the case or any information about it printed on the packaging. Inside the box, the lightweight case is very well protected between two thick polyethylene foam slabs.
We received one of the first samples Streacom had to offer and thus, unfortunately, we cannot comment on the bundled items, simply because we received none. We received just the case, without a manual or even the necessary screws. Retail samples of course should ship with the necessary hardware.
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RaistlinZ - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link
A full tower case, put on its side, with ventilation all around...got it.Oxford Guy - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link
Not quite."It essentially looks like a typical tower case that has fallen on its side. An aluminum cover shields the expansion card slot screws. Strangely, there are no ventilation or fan openings, even though there is more than enough space of a small exhaust fan."
meacupla - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link
This might have been a decent product, if it were released 10 years ago.These days, it's all about compact mITX systems or compact streaming devices, like nVidia Shield.
Also, IR? really? BT/Wifi remote control is the way to go.
Odeen - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link
You can always add an internal USB RF remote receiver (Yaocoo makes one) to any case. The problem is that you're stuck with Yaocoo's remote. IR is important if you want to integrate the HTPC into a home theater system with an IR universal remote.RF is great, but it's not a solution until there's a universal RF remote
nmm - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link
It drives me nuts when I see fan mounts that block 30%+ of the fan area with mounts intended to be compatible with multiple fan sizes.http://images.anandtech.com/doci/9618/manual.jpg
The design is intended to be versatile, but in the end it just winds up being wasteful in my mind.
budabellyx - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link
Does it also make toast?Jhlot - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link
It looks like a toaster in the first picture.Oxford Guy - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link
"The noise of a finalized system will solely depend on the parts chosen by the user. We had to skip directly to our advanced noise testing, exploring the noise dampening capabilities of the case."Not good enough. If you're going to claim its temperature performance is such and such, after adding three fans — and compare that performance with other cases — then you need to post the decibel rating.
Cooling is about decibels per watt... how much noise is generated to cool a specific amount of waste heat. Without the decibel information your review is unfinished.
Oxford Guy - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link
It's also a contradiction to say the dust filtration sheets have holes that are too large to effectively capture dust and then praise them for being "very practical".Shouldn't a practical dust filter filter the dust?
E.Fyll - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link
And that's why we had its thermal performance posted without the fans - and compared it. A single sentence, "worse even than the BitFenix Neos", is better than five graphs.You may be right about dB(A)/W (although it does not work quite that way) but it is not useful to
I specifically wrote that the filtration sheets have holes that may be too large to stop small dust particles. That is a lot different than "effectively capture dust". If what you mean by "effectively" is "all of it", then the only filter you should consider is a solid wall.
Also, "practical" and "efficient" are two vastly different things. And stating that something is practical for a very specific reason is a very long shot from "praising".