Hiper Osiris Mid-Tower

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by Greg King on March 4, 2009 in Cases & PSUs

When we took a look at Hiper’s Anubis chassis just over a year ago, we were quite impressed, to say the least. For a company that seemed to come out of nowhere, their first offering was robust, well-designed, and feature-packed. We of course had high hopes when we received their follow-up Osiris. Does it live up to our expectations?

Page 2 – Interior

With the side panel off, we can see that aside from the power supply location, the Osiris is pretty much the same as the Anubis and that’s a good thing.

Included with the Osiris are three fans, two of which flank the CPU cooler. Both are set to exhaust the warm air put off by the CPU and both use a small three pin power connectors. One thing that we did not like about the Anubis was the exclusion of fans for two of the three spots. It seems that the management at Hiper listened to the community and with the Osiris, they’ve included three Hiper fans this time around.

Also back is the hard drive carrier. Made out of the same thick aluminum that the rest of the case is, the Osiris can accommodate up to four hard drives, each kept cool by the front 120mm fan that attaches directly to the carrier.

Moving around to the back of the Osiris, we get to my main source of frustration. Not only is the aluminum motherboard tray thin, but you have to approach the PCI bracket screws from an angle with your screwdriver. I know that they market this as hands-free, but I don’t know a single person with small enough hands to easily secure your PCI cards without the use of tools.

To make matters worse, the side of the case sticks out far enough that you have to go at the screws from a slight angle, making your chances of stripping the threads on the case that must more likely. This isn’t a deal breaker but it is something that would be nice to see addressed in their future cases.

As with any case, there are the plethora of cables that allow the convenience of front facing I/O ports and the Osiris is no different.

One of the nice things about the Osiris is how easy it is to strip down. The front of the case comes off rather easily and the sides do just the same. With the case “naked”, it’s easier to install your components and route the cables as you see fit. Even with the front and both sides off, the Osiris is as solid as a rock and was able to support my body weight in its entirety.

Hiper has included a fan grill on the front fan as we can see with the front panel removed. With this Osiris, this addition seems completely unnecessary which leads me to believe that the Anubis and the Osiris share the same part. Which they do. By removing the thumb screws on either side, the hard drive carrier slides out the front. While it will certainly throw off your air flow, I see no reason why you couldn’t move the hard drives up a few places and put a decent water pump at the bottom.

Hiper has decided to ship the chassis with a 5.25″ to 3.5″ adapter. I can’t seen anyone using this anymore, but for those that might be looking for a case that offers this, here you go. I suppose you could mount a fifth hard drive in this spot and the aluminum sides that you attach it to might aid in dissipating some extra heat as well.

As we mentioned earlier, the front-mounted fan attaches to the hard drive cage and comes out with it when you remove it to install your hard drives. One complaint that we had with the Anubis was that we could not get our test Seagate 750GB drives into the cage as it was slightly too wide. After being assured by Hiper that this would be corrected, the first thing I tried when we got this case in for evaluation was to install this same drive. It fit this time.

Running along the top and bottom of the hard drive cage are sets of raised fins. These should aid in dissipating even more heat that the hard drives put off.

For demonstration, we installed three different hard drives into the drive cage. The top drive is a slim Seagate 250GB drive, the middle is a standard 320GB Seagate drive and the bottom on is the larger Seagate 750GB drive that we had issues with during our testing of the Anubis. To clarify on our 750GB drive issues, it was only the Seagate that we had issues with. I have recently purchased a pair of 750GB Western Digital drives and have them in the Anubis without problem. Thankfully, this is not an issue in the Osiris.

With the drives installed, putting the cage back in is as simple as setting it between the drive bay supports. Once in, the provided thumb screws will lock it in place. This is a tight fit unless you have it perfectly aligned, so don’t fight it, just back it up and push it in slowly.

Taking a look at the front panel, it’s held into place with four metal “pegs” and these also allow it to be removed with little effort as well. At the top of the front panel there is a pair of hidden drive covers with spring-loaded doors. These allow the front of the case to retain its smooth face and still allow access to optical drives that sit behind it. The one caveat to these are that the front bezel of your CD or DVD drive must be removed, otherwise they will catch on the fold- down door when they go back into the case.

Finally, let’s take a look at the Osiris’ accessories, and also our test results.

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