Date: September 26, 2006 - Author: Matthew Harris - Editor: Rob Williams
If you're a PC enthusiast chances are you've heard of Spire and if you're a car enthusiast the chances are you've heard of Pininfarina. If you're into both the chances are good that when you heard those two words together your first thought was "WTF?". Well, Spire just didn't pull a name out of a hat for this case, it was indeed designed by the folks at Pininfarina. This begs the question "Just what do car designers know about PC cases?" Read on to find out.
Today I'm taking a look at a PC case designed not by PC geeks but by car guys. Yep, that's right, the Spire Pininfarina. The Pininfarina isn't exactly your normal case. The sides are hinged at the bottoms and fold down rather than pulling off and the top, front and rear are hidden under an aluminum facade.
Let's see what Spire has to say about the Pininfarina shall we?
Pininfarina SP-ATX-PALU/B
"Exclusively designed by world famous designer Pininfarina"
Spire has joined forces world-renowned designer Pininfarina to develop and introduce a truely unique state-of-the-art chassis to tech-enthusiasts and professionals worldwide. Pininfarina, most acclaimed for the Ferrari and Maserati, has fashioned a revolutionary case that has transformed the traditionally vapid pc case into a sophisticated and aerodynamic PC power house.
The exclusive Spire Pininfarina chassis was designed with functionality, creativity and opulent style in mind.
Packaging Dimension: 522x260x517mm (L x W x H)
Specifications:
| Dimensions | 495x200x450mm (L x W x H) |
| Material | Aluminum Alloy Bezel & Metal SECC Galvanized Steel Chassis |
| Material thickness | Aluminum 6.0mm | SECC 1.0mm |
| Color | Pitch Black |
| Mainboard | Extend ATX / Micro ATX / Mini ATX |
| 5.25 Bays | 3 visible ~ 1 hidden |
| 3.5 Bays | 2 visible ~ 4 hidden |
| Bracket slots | 7 ~ Incl. 3 PCIE/AGP/PCI Stabilizers |
| Cooling | 3x 80x80x25mm fans (rear included, right included, left not included) 1x 120x120x25mm (front included) 1x 120 Fan Duct (left included) |
| External | USB 2.0 x 2 | MIC x 1 | Earphone jack x 1 | |
| Connections | IEEE 1394 x 1 |
| Features | Lightweight aluminum & Durable metal frame. Italian Stylish design. Front USB, IEEE1394 & Sound connections. full screen, radiation protected. Side panel access, screw free installation. Optimized internal space design for Highly-efficient airflow. |
| Packaging | 522x260x517mm (L x W x H) |
| N.W. Weight | 13.50 K.G |
| G.W. Weight | 14.50 K.G |
This is a nice touch that gives the case a very finished look. Not only that but the thickness of the aluminum is such (8mm) that with the door closed over the optical drives there's nearly zero noise. As I said earlier the sides fold down. This includes the motherboard tray which is attached to the right side of the case. The top-front of the case is also hinged to hide the front panel USB/firewire/audio ports.
Looking at the above pictures we see more unusual features on the Pininfarina. The fan duct over the CPU is 120mm rather than 80mm or 92mm, there's a removable brace with an 80mm fan mount on the access side of the case and on the mobo side of the case there's an 80mm fan located to the forward center of the case. This last point is interesting. This fans purpose is to allow you to use the 3.5" external bays and the HDD mounting above the HDD cage for mounting even more hard drives without the worry of your high RPM drives going nuclear. The power and reset switches are located on the left of the curved front facade and the power and HDD activity LEDs are on the right.
While I can see the reasoning behind this since most users put their tower down low on or just above floor level, I personally find having the switches up top are a bit awkward. Of course I keep my PC on my desk where the chance of having my PC double as a floor vac are reduced.
With the left side of the case open and the brace removed we've got a clear view of the drive cage. The drive cage is tooless and holds a total of four drives. It's held in with a combination of a clip and a thumbscrew. Removing the thumbscrew and lifting the tab on the clip allows the cage to slide back slightly then pivot back and out to allow for easier loading. Pulling the cage further out removes it completely and hidden away underneath it is the accessory box containing the drive rails, the PC case speaker and the screws and standoffs.
The 5.25" bays, the external 3.5" bays and the upper HDD bay all share unique locks. They're two piece affairs consisting of a main body and a center toggle. The main body has two dowels that go through the case and lock into the drive's screw holes and the toggle has locks that engage the drive bay when rotated to the "locked" position. The beauty of this design is that it allows for non-standard devices with the same distance between the front and rear screw holes (naturally) but with the faceplate in a non-standard distance from the mounting holes to still be mounted in this case AND be located properly in relation to the front panel.
Looking at the pic of the mobo on the case side/mobo tray look at the hinge points. These hinges are simple tabs on the case sides that fit into slots in the case frame. If you open the sides and swing them down a few degrees from vertical at about 10 degrees from vertical you can lift up and out on the side to remove it entirely. I'm touching on this because there are a couple of shots where the case side has been removed.
The front of the case features a 120mm fan with a nicely punched stock grill which allows the fan to breathe with minimal restriction, on the rear though the fan grill is a shabbily punched affair that's pretty restrictive. This grill coupled with the grill in the rear facade add up to such a restriction that I was barely able to feel airflow from the exhaust fan. Oh for shame! This lead to some interesting finds later in my testing once the whole thing was up and running. I'll discuss these in a bit.
Once the motherboard is mounted and the wiring connected it's time to fold the case door up to attach the power cables. I've included a shot of the USB/firewire/audio wiring for those curious about it. The USB ports are mounted in a pretty universal keyed 10 pin header connector while the firewire and audio ports are individually pinned to the mobo. I sincerely hope that the mobo MFG's can get together and come up with universal wiring for the audio and firewire front panel connectors. This would allow for the wires to be on header connectors so that guys with big paws like me would not have to play with a bunch of tiny wires and plugs.
I'd like to take a second here and point out that the PSU has to be installed by removing the rear facade. The rear facade covers the screw holes so that's the only way to deal with it. While I'm all for the monolithic look I'd like to see a few concessions made for practicality such as reliefs for the PSU screws so that the rear of the case AND the mobo side don't have to be removed to install or replace a PSU in an existing PC.
Once the mobo is in and wired up with the cables for the optical and floppy drives and PSU power it's time to slap in the hard drives.
The Drive rails are totally screw less. You simply line the tabs in the rails up with the screw holes in the drives and press them on. After that slide the drives into the cage and the ears lock the drives in place.
After the drive's in place you pivot the cage around and put the thumbscrew back in locking it in. Replacing the strut bar wraps up the install. I'm actually impressed with the whole process of installing a PC in the Pininfarina. Overall aside from the PSU issue it's a painless operation. Very impressive. I've built literally hundreds of PCs over the years and this was the most enjoyable case I've ever worked with.
One thing I'd like to point out is the length of the bundled fan's wires. They're deplorably short! As you can see I had to stretch the wires across the mobo to reach an IDE molex for power to the rear fan. Yes, I know that this case doesn't have a window and with the strut running across the side it's not an ideal candidate for one but I still would like to see a bit more ease in hiding wires for the stock fans. This case runs in the lower "Premium case" price range at about $130 so a bit more polish on an already killer case would really be nice.
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Now, on to the numbers. As you can see I added an 80mm fan in the one empty fan slot, I'll elaborate on my findings with it as an intake and as an exhaust in a bit but now on to the tested system!
For testing I used the factory HSF on the 3800+ and did a bit of overclocking to 2.5Ghz at 1.42 Vcore. First round I ran the bottom fan as exhaust so that it would help to compliment the restrictive nature of the rear fan. I ran SuperPi 1.4 Mod and 3D Mark 2006 concurrently for loading after allowing the PC to sit idle for over an hour to stabilize.
| State | CPU | Mobo |
|---|---|---|
| Idle | 38*C | 34*C |
| Load | 53*C | 42*C |
I must admit that as a long time water cooling enthusiast that was a bit dismayed by these temps. I decided to reverse the side fan and see how it did as an intake. I have to say I was a bit intrigued by the results until I started looking at what was happening.
| State | CPU | Mobo |
|---|---|---|
| Idle | 34*C | 34*C |
| Load | 44*C | 38*C |
How could adding more air into an already over powered box lower temps? I was nonplussed to say the least until I started looking closer. Come to find out that the culprit was the huge duct over the CPU. When I was using the lower fan as an exhaust the duct was getting nearly zero air movement and that meant that the CPU was sitting in what amounted to dead air. After reversing the fan I ended up shoving air out the duct which helped to move cooler air past the HSF for the CPU and as for the mobo temps, the diode is located under the top PCI-e slot so the fresh air being blown across the diode resulted in lower temps for that as well.
All in all not a bad showing for a case that's hobbled by a less than ideal thermal design. I'd imagine that if the the rear fan was not as restricted that using it and the door fan as exhausts would result in the duct functioning as it should and not having such anomalous results.
Now to sum it up in terms that everyone can get behind.
Overall I'm pretty impressed with the Spire Pininfarina ATX case. The look is smooth and the execution is for the most part quite good. There is a bit of room for improvement though and those issues will have a slight ding on the overall score but not to a huge extent. The PSU issue is the biggest problem that I encountered. When you've got a PC built and the PSU dies and needs replacement you don't want to tear the PC apart to to facilitate the replacement. The fan wires are annoying but easily extended by an enterprising modder. That said I'm awarding the Spire Pininfarina an 8 out of 10 and the Editor's choice award.
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