Thursday, December 17, 2015

[Review] Tatu TMJ7 Gaming Case


Introduction

The first thing that pops into our mind when we first heard the brand Tatu was the 90’s one hit song All The Things She Said by the Russian duo group TATU. It really made us somewhat intrigued with the prospect of reviewing the TMJ7 Gaming Casing. A quick googling on the net return us zero/nada/cero hits on neither any reviews nor its own manufacturer website. It’s like it had been sucked into another dimension or something. The only tid-bits of details and data that we could obtain were from some sales sites like Rakuten.my & 11street.my.

Here are some of the details that we could scourge from the net:

Specifications: TATU TMJ7 Gaming Casing
Brand:
TATU
Model:
TMJ7
Type:
ATX / Micro ATX / Mini ITX
Colour:
Silver
Thickness:
2.0mm Aluminium (Panel), 1.0mm SPCC Steel Body & 3.5mm Acrylic Side Panel
Dimension:
220 x 480 x 350mm
Net Weight:
5.3kg
VGA Support:
Below 280mm
Power:
ATX PSU
CPU Cooling:
Below 140mm
Water Cooling:
2x120mm
HDD:
3.5” x2, 2.5” x2. (Expendable to 3.5” x3 / 2.5” x4)
Front Panel:
USB3.0 x2 / USB2.0 x2 / Audio

 

The casing is looking good so far. In this small review, we will be reviewing the TATU TMJ7 Gaming Casing which the folks from Mod n Go Design have been kindly enough to provide us a unit.

Packaging

When the case first arrived at our doorsteps, to say the packaging were minimalist designed really is an understatement. It’s really is just a normal brown box made to fit the case for transportation. Aside from a small tag with the name Tatu stuck to side, there was no other identifier to distinguish it, not even the model name was indicated anywhere on the box.


Opening the box you will be greeted with the case wrapped inside a clear plastic bag to protect it from any scratches and it is sandwiched snugly inside a foam protector to save the case from any dents etc during transportation.

 

Heartbreak no.1: Aside from the case there were no other freebies included except for a bag of screws for your PC assembly. Not even a proper user manual was given, which is to us a really big facepalm thing to do. As bare as the Sahara desert it seems, can’t really blame it for its RM399.00 price I guess, there are not many choices for aluminium casing in the market at the moment with that kind of price.


External

The casing itself is made out of 3 types of material. 2mm aluminium for the main panels, 1mm SECC metal for the frame and 3.5mm Acrylic for its side panels. The case feels really sturdy for its size and seems well build except for some small detailing issues. we really like the design, its simple and elegant kinda remind us of the old Silverstone casing design philosophy of using one clean piece aluminium panel for the front and top.


The front/top aluminium panel is joined together with the rear aluminium panel by simply using rivets. This is where I find it to be lacking a bit, the rivet work is a bit shoddy, you can feel the uneven cut at the tip of your fingers when you run your fingers over them. This is a small setback when you are too accustomed to good rivet works by other casing manufacturers like CoolerMaster & Silverstone. The front of the case is very clean, you can only find a power button, headphone/mic jack, 2x USB2.0 & 2x USB 3.0 ports and that’s it. For added effect the power button lights up blue when you turn on the power.


Not a single 5.25” drive slot is provided, hence this is how the manufacturer able to cut down the length of the case by inches comparing to other mid-tower cases on the market.  For those who still hang to their DVD writers for installing games or watching DVD etc, be prepared to spend a bit more to buy an external solution.


At the rear of the case you will find the usual stuffs, a 12cm exhaust fan placement, 7 PCI/PCIe slots with aluminium ventilated covers, motherboard port placement & ATX PSU compartment. At the bottom of the case are raised feet that should give some degree of clearance to let cool air in through the bottom vents.


The side panels are made out of thick 3.5mm acrylic panel held in place by 4 pieces of black lightweight aluminium screws.


The Inside


The inside of the case is quite roomy, it is painted flat black mostly on the metal SECC parts. You should be able to fit an ITX up to ATX motherboard in here. All the necessary holes for wire management are provided though without any rubber grommet. Fan placement is provided at the top and the front plate for 2x 12cm fans each. Users can take out the plate by unscrewing 2 screws from the side of the plate to dismantle it from the case to attach case fans.
Heartbreak no.2: As you can see, not a single case fan is provided by the manufacturer which is another face palm moment in our book.


Only a power button, harddisk led & power led connector is provided with case. Neither reset button nor internal speaker is provided for assembly. The provided front 2x USB 2.0 & 2x USB 3.0 connector is good thing though because you can never get enough of them for all of your peripherals.


At the back of the motherboard tray, they had provided around 2cm of space for all your cable management needs. This is a plus to us so that you can tuck away all those unwanted cables at the back from any prying eyes.


They had stated the case can accommodate 2x 2.5” drives and 3x 3.5” drives, there are mounting holes to mount a single 2.5” drive at the motherboard tray just beside the PSU compartment and another 2.5” drive at the HDD cage. 3.5” drives are mounted using white plastic HDD tray. If any users wanted to expand this, they could sacrifice some of the fans to mount the hard disk at the fan mounting plates.


Components Installation


Even without a proper manual for installation, the process is a breeze, everything fits nicely and as you can see the case can even fit a large air-cooler like the Noctua NH-D14 though you have to forfeit the top case fan to make it fit.  If you’re planning to use AIO coolers with the case you would be restricted to 120mm type mounted on the rear exhaust vent. To use any 240mm AIO coolers would not be advisable due to the top fan mount does not have any exhaust holes for the hot air to be expelled out of the case. There is enough room for GPUs give and take up to 320mm. Using semi-modular or modular PSU is recommended due to the small space left in between the HDD cage and PSU to stash non modular cables.

Temperature

Due to time constraint, we’ll only be doing a basic CPU temperature test. Here are our testbed specification and our findings:

CPU       : AMD A10 5800K (Turbo Core to 4.2Ghz)
RAM      : 2x2GB Gskill Ripjaws 2000Mhz DDR3
M/B       : ASUS A88X-Plus (BIOS version 2801)
GPU       : MSI R7 240 2GB DDR3
PSU        : Corsair TX650M
SSD        : Mushkin Chronos 120GB
HDD       : WD Green 2TB WD20EARS

CPU Cooler
Minimum Temp (c)
Maximum Temp (c)
AMD Stock Cooler
49
62
Noctua NH-D14
49
56

Heartbreak no 3: Due to the design of the case of having no intake vents at its entire fan placement really take a toll on the CPU temperature. Yes you could minimize the effect a bit by using third party cooling solution, but to us it shouldn’t be that way in the first place. Sure, design is important but practicality is just as important to us. The manufacturer should have estimated this issue during their design process. In our opinion is that, the reason for the temperature to be on the wee high side of things is due to the evident lack of intake vents on the fan placement, that the fans are just simply circulating the available air inside the case, the longer the pc run the hotter the air will be. 


To try and prove our theory, we did 2 different test to see if temperature would improve if better intake of air was introduce to the whole system. First test is just by keeping the side panel open throughout the test and the other test is by making a simple side panel mod with proper intake vent hole inclusive of an intake fan. Here is the result of the test:

CPU Cooler
Minimum Temp (c)
Maximum Temp (c)
Noctua NH-D14 (Reference)
49
56
Noctua NH-D14 (Open Sidepanel)
34
41
Noctua NH-D14 (Modded Sidepanel)
36
46

As you can see by channelling clean cold air from outside into the case really helps in keeping the temperature as low as possible. Having the minimum temp drop from 49c to 34c-36c and max temp from 56c to 41c-46c is a lot by all means. Better temperature means that we can use better and in some case hotter components inside the case than what previously possibly could.

Conclusion

It’s a love-hate relationship with this case. We love the design and choice of material chosen to build the case but we surely hate some of the nagging issues involving the high temperature reading due to inefficient airflow. By all means it doesn’t mean that the case is entirely unusable but when used with our testbed 32nm mule CPU everything does seems going toasty when we run our stress test. It should be much better when paired with other lower wattage CPU’s in the market though.

If you’re in the market for a small footprint mid/mini-tower casing, this case really hits the ballpark. Where in the market could you find an aluminium tower case this size but can fit a full size ATX motherboard at a low RM399.00 price? Most casing with the same league of footprint in the market is at best only able to accommodate up to MATX motherboards. Here’s a small comparison table for your reference:
   
Case Name
Tatu
TMJ7
Bitfenix
Prodigy M
Bitfenix
Phenom
Corsair 350D
Corsair
Air 240
CM
N200
Width (mm)
220
250
250
210
260
202
Height (mm)
480
404
330
450
397
378
Depth (mm)
350
359
374
440
320
445
  
We really would love to give this case a gold noob award but due to its shortcomings in term of inadequately thought of air intake vents and absence of any freebies case fans and manual guide we had to dig deep and gave it a bronze award instead. Again we would like to say our deepest thank you to the people from Mod n Go Design for making this review possible, I believe if any of you decided to take a plunge in getting this case from them, throw them a few bucks more and they would gladly make u a modded side panel such as ours to tackle your temperature worries.

Pro:
Simple & stylish designed.
Mixture of lightweight aluminium, SECC steel & thick acrylic panel makes a light but sturdy case.
Supports most ITX, MATX & ATX motherboards in the market.
Small footprint for a mid-tower case.
Competitively priced.

Con:
Not so great airflow.
Comes in a bare minimum package, a proper manual with free one or two case fans thrown in would make it a better package.
DVD & Blue-Ray disks lover would cringe at the non-existent 5.25” slot.




Tuesday, February 26, 2013

[Review] Plextor M5 Pro Xtreme 256GB


Introduction

In most of the South East Asia SSD market, Plextor is a company that is quite relatively unknown compared to other big name companies like OCZ, SanDisk, Micron, Samsung & Intel. This is quite surprising when their SSD’s are very well known in the US & European market for its superior performance & high reliability. Plextor has a few range of SSD in their inventory for the consumer market & enterprise market ranging from the M2P & M3 series to their current most top of the line M5 Pro series.


In this review, I will be reviewing the Plextor M5 Pro Xtreme 256GB which the folks from Build Technology Supply Sdn Bhd have been kindly enough given me a sample to take it for a spin through a series of benchmarks. The table below listed out some finer details of the M5 Pro Xtreme released by the manufacturer: 


Specifications: Plextor M5 Pro Xtreme 256 GB
Brand:
Plextor
Model:
M5 Pro Xtreme 256 GB
Controller:
Marvell 88SS9187
Flash Type:
Toshiba Synchronous Toggle Mode MLC NAND, 19nm
Buffer:
512MB DDR3
Form Factor:
2.5”
Dimension:
69.85mm x 100mm x 7mm
Capacity:
256 GB (238.47 GB usable)
Interface:
SATA 6 Gbps (SATA III)
Firmware:
1.02
Supported Tech:
256bit key AES Encryption, 128bit ECC, SMART, NCQ & TRIM
Warranty:
5 Years

Packaging


The front of the M5 Pro Xtreme packaging really stands out among the dull monotone packaging that most of SSD manufacturers are using. With its electric blue metallic packaging it really does look fresh. The model brand numbers & capacity are easily read and understood.


The rear of the packaging listed out details like the warranty, supported file format, its specifications etc for those who are interested in it.


Rejoice for all slim ultrabook users who’s looking for an upgrade, the M5 Pro is made with the 7mm height form factor in mind.


Some of the extra features according to Plextor that is integrated into their M5 Pro’s SSD which is True Speed & True Protect. According to their website, the features helps by:
  • True speed prevents the drastic performance drops seen in some SSD’s after intense or long-term usage.
  • True protect ensures that data is stored and retrieved without error by using ECCs, Plextor firmware and robust data hold-out algorithm.



Opening the outer box packaging, you will be greeted with a rubber like foam packaging to protect the SSD drive itself for any knocks during transport and handling. On top of the foam lid is pasted with instructions and key of the NTI SSD Solution Suite for Plextor software for buyers to easily do backups and migration from their current drives & ssd. Its a really nice bonus for any Plextor SSD buyers.



Inside the foam, creative use of space and arrangement is evident here where you can find all the included items in a nice tight packaging.


Inside the packaging you will receive:
  • The SSD
  • 3.5” Mounting Bracket
  • The Screw Package
  • Quick Installation Guide



 The SSD Drive



Unlike the flashy outer box packaging design, the drive has a nice simplistic design most modders would loved. A simple Plextor brand and logo adorns the top of the drive and a sticker with some details of the drive at the bottom. The whole drive case assembly material is fully aluminium unlike most other ssd in the market that uses hard plastic or combination of plastic/aluminium/metal. This may help in keeping the drive temperature down.


Details like manufactured date, firmware revision, capacity and model number are clearly stated in bottom sticker label of the drive.


The Software Suite



The NTI SSD Solution Suite is a fairly straightforward and easy program to use. In the main menu users can choose to use either Echo or Backup Now EZ. I dare to say that most users could clearly even guess their use from the name alone.


The Echo option lets the user to clone their existing hard drive or ssd to the new M5 Pro Xtreme ssd that the user have purchased. It’s really helpful when the user do not wish to go through the process of reinstalling and resetting up their pc all over again.


Backup Now Ez option lets the user do backup of the entire pc to protect from sudden data loss from cases of computer crash.


Review Testbed Configuration

In the review, I will be comparing the Plextor M5 Pro with a few run of the mill SSD & Hard Drive’s to show the difference in performance that any typical user would get in an event if they were to upgrade to the M5 Pro Xtreme SSD.

Testbed configurations are as follows:

  • AMD Phenom II X6 1075T (Thuban, 6 cores, 3.3Ghz overclocked)
  • Asus Crosshair V Formula (990FX, SB950, BIOS 1402)
  • 2 x 2 GB Gskill Ripjaws DDR3-2000 (1766Mhz 9-9-9-24-1T)
  • 2 x 4 GB Crucial Ballistix Elite DDR3-1866 (1766Mhz 9-9-9-24-1T)
  • MSI HD6870 Hawk (930Mhz Core/5200Mhz Memory)
  • Tested SSD/HDD
    • Plextor M5 Pro Extreme 256GB (Firmware 1.02)
    • Mushkin Chronos 120GB (Firmware 5.02)
    • Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB
    • Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARX 2TB
  • Corsair TX650M 650W Power Supply
  • Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64
  • Drivers
§         Display: AMD Catalyst 13.1
§         SATA: Microsoft AHCI



Read Test Suite

In this first test, I will be using AIDA64 Extreme disk benchmark to get some estimation in the performance difference between the M5 Pro Xtreme with most SSD and Hard Drive any typical users would have in their system currently. AIDA64 Extreme Disk Benchmark is commonly used to determine the data transfer speed of modern hard disk drives, solid-state drives, optical drives, and flash memory based devices.



Right off the bat, the M5 Pro Xtreme showed its prowess in being able to sustain its read speed in the upper spectrum of 480 MB/s in all of the tests. The Chronos performance even though it is still quite good when you compared it to its Hard Drive rivals, still lacks in the performance department. In my opinion this may attribute to its slower aging SandForce controller and limited memory channel that is made available to the flash controller. The combination of Marvell controller & Toshiba NAND that Plextor has chosen for the M5 Pro Xtreme really shines in this test.



AS SSD Benchmark Test

AS SSD Benchmark is the second of the benchmark suites that I have selected to run in testing the M5 Pro Xtreme level of performance. So far it’s the only premier ssd only benchmark program in the market, used widely in ssd benchmark test all over the world; it does a good job of keeping the results simple but usable for users to understand. A fair warning though, the benchmark tests with incompressible data, so to some ssd with combination of flash controller and NAND memory that rely on compression for speed it doesn't always give a fair performance numbers.

Sequential Read/Write Speed



Sequential speed is where a SSD usually flex its muscle, with read speed going up almost to 500MB/s nearly saturating the maximum theoretical interface speed of SATAIII, the M5 Pro Xtreme makes mince meat of all the hard drives in the comparison. It even leaves the Mushkin Chronos, in the dust.

Random Read/Write 4K



Random Read/Write 4K-64



This is where things got a little bit surprising; in the random write 4k test, the Mushkin Chronos somehow suddenly was able to beat the M5 Pro Xtreme with about 10% difference in speed. Other than that it’s business as usual for the M5 Pro Xtreme in the random 4k read & read/write 4k-64 tests.

Compression Test



  


Based from the graphs you can see that the M5 Pro Xtreme has the best speed/consistency in both read and write. It’s read speed reaching as high as 480MB/s and maintaining it most of the time. Only in an instance that it’s write speed ever dropped low in the 70MB/s level. The same cannot be said about the others SSD & Hard drive in this test though.

Copy Benchmark

ISO Copy


Program Copy

Game Copy


In this test, the program emulates 3 types of copying workloads that a normal drive will be put through its entire lifetime in a consumer PC.  Again in each of the ISO, program & game copy test the M5 Pro Xtreme had registered both the highest copy rate & the lowest duration rate among the hard drives & ssd drives.


PCMark 7

When it was created, the developers of PCMark 7 had developed the program with a new approach in storage benchmarking, geared specifically towards SSD performance in real life applications. It does it through simulating real world scenarios by playing back recorded traces of user activities which unlike many other trace-based programs, it also records the waiting time between issued commands to show a more accurate representation of the actual user environment.

Overall Score


Windows Defender

Importing Pictures

Video Editing

Windows Media Center

Adding Music

Starting Applications

Gaming

As expected, the M5 Pro Xtreme took the crown with its performance in this benchmark suite, with a 5% to 42% performance lead from the Chronos and a whopping 6% to 94% performance difference compared to the hard drives in most of the tests. Only in a few tests was the M5 Pro Xtreme with its Marvell controller had lost with the tiniest of margin to the Mushkin Chronos with its aging SandForce controller.



Conclusion

Before i lay down my conclusion of this review, i would like to avert your attention to a small matter. During this review it was made clear to me that there was some slight performance bottleneck issue when the M5 Pro Xtreme was used on the AM3+ testbed, even after replacing the motherboard with a newer unit, the bottleneck still persist. In my opinion it could probably due to the motherboard aging SB950 south bridge design. I came to this conclusion after further digging done from various sources, i could safely say that from the comparison of the tests done on most Intel & AMD FM1/FM2 systems that i read from internet the performance penalty was not evident. Fret not though; i had calculated the difference is at worst around only 10-15% depending on type of test done. Not that noticeable I’d say for all end-users but still I do hope to revisit this test on an Intel/AMD FM2 testbed sometime in the near future.

The Plextor M5 Pro Xtreme is an exceptionally good SSD, at around the same price point; it competes with the big boys of the SSD world like the Samsung 840 Pro, OCZ Vector, OCZ Vertex 4 & Intel 520 SSD which incidentally performs more or less just as well. Choice is just a matter of taste to the buyer but still, i have no problem recommending the M5 Pro Xtreme if ever you’re in the market for a fast and reliable SSD drive. Having extra’s like the NTI SSD Solution Suite for your data migration needs and the plethora of features like True Speed & True Protect makes the deal so much sweeter to me.

Again I would like to say my deepest heartiest thank you to the peoples from Build Technology Supply Sdn Bhd for making this review even possible.

Pro:
Very high performance.
Components used is picked from the best by Plextor.
Supports S.M.A.R.T, TRIM, NCQ, 256bit key AES Encryption, 128bit ECC & garbage collection.
5- years warranty.
7mm form factor suitable for ultra slim laptops.
NTI SSD Solution Suite given free for buyers to easily do data migration or backup.

Con:
Price might be a bit too high for some buyers.
NTI SSD Solution Suite need to be downloaded from the internet.