Superpower is a 12 year old company that designs and manufactures PC cases and power supplies, along with their server counterparts. Until recently, I had never heard of this company, but I was recently presented the opportunity to review one of their PC cases and become familiar with their product line. They sent me a KS-298XP, from their Polaris II series.

The Good

There is plenty of good with this case. First, I noticed the pleasant design. Pretty typical of a mid-tower case, and not too snazzy. They incorporated the screwless design into this case, like Enlight has done. After the removal of one screw off the back, you can remove the top and side plates to get to the PC’s innards. The plates are very solid in construction, not flimsy like some cheaper counterparts.

Once in, I saw the SH 250W ATX power supply. A plastic guard protected the pre-installed case fan and PC speaker in the front. There are bays for three 3.5″ drives (hard drives and floppy drives) and four 5.25″ drives. The drive rack for the 3.5″ drives is removable for easier installation. The face plates are equipped with clips so you can put them back later…..good thinking. When installing, say, a CD-ROM, the face plates comes out very easily. You just slide the CD-ROM in and it rests on top of some little metal tabs. With these, you don’t have to literally hold the drive up with your hand while you attempt to screw it into place. It makes lining up the screws of the drives much easier.

The case is very spacious. In fact, I could my Abit BX6 mainboard into it. The Abit BX6 is a larger mainboard than many and can’t fit into many ATX cases without parts hitting each other. There would however be a problem with a board of this size if you decided to fill most of your drive bays in this case. The drives themselves would fit without hitting the SDRAM. You could tell that they made the case big enough for that. But, depending on the drive, your power connectors, etc. may run into the SDRAM, causing a problem. In most cases, you won’t run into this problem.

The case seems well ventilated, with plenty of air passage out the back and the nice case fan in the front. There is no air holes in the front, mainly for aesthetics. The case fan seems to draw its air in through the bottom, meaning the fan wouldn’t be quite as effective if the case were sitting on the carpet. But, on a flat desk, it could draw air in through the bottom. In the other case, the case fan simply serves to circulate the air within.

The slot inserts are metal and the kind that gets screwed in. With some cheaper cases, when you want to install a card into an expansion slot, you have to literally tear the slot inserts out, meaning you can nver put them back. With the KS-298XP, this is not the case.

The Bad

The screwless design is definitely a good idea, but, until you get used to it, it can be a bit daunting to put the case back together again. You’ll have to really study it the first few times. Minor problem, really.

The only other feature I noticed was that the motherboard plate is not removable like it is in many Enlight cases. This isn’t much of a problem, though, since the case is plenty spacious enough to install the motherboard without removing the plate.

Final Take

This case is one of the more well-thought out cases I’ve reviewed. A lot of small annoying issues have been noticed and I can tell that Superpower has designed their case to alleviate these little annoyances. This case is very solid and easy to work with.

While never having heard of Superpower before this, many kudos go out to them from PCMechanic for an excellent product.

CONTACT INFORMATION:

Superpower Supply, Inc.
10675 E. Rush Street
S. El Monte, CA  91733

www.superpower.com