Freedom Xone Chassis

Conclusions and Award

The Akasa Freedom chassis is a good replacement for the trusted ZEN that has made its rounds from here.  Aesthetically pleasing to the eye, the Akasa Freedom chassis will look the part in any modern office or SoHo environment.   Most importantly the components together are very quiet.   The tool free design makes upgrades easy to install for the most basic of end users.  Some might prefer to switch out the standard supplied black fan for a matching white LED fan.  Others may wish to  move the top exhaust fan over to the rear, preventing that paperwork taking off from the top of the chassis.   Though from our quick test a solitary sheet of paper lightly fluttered up and down not moving from its original place of rest.  

The top front panel has all the requirements most will need and the main power on/off switch has a brushed aluminum finish which is a nice touch.

The pre-cut hole for those wishing to switch out their CPU heatsink fan comes as a welcome as in the last month we have switched around several 1156 HSF's and this has been a enormous time saving element.   Using the sensitive fingers of a Vet; they probed around the chassis to find any sharp edges - but none could be found which is good for a chassis of this budget.  The tool free DVD and Hard drive mounts easily filled without any issues.   This made a change.  For those wishing to utilise external water cooling the 2 ports are easily within reach of your required component.

One of the biggest problems we encounter when looking into chassis of this nature, is will they support a full 120mm HSF and, a full sized VGA card.  Now the FirePro V8700 is not a small card by any manner of means and fits neatly into place with the side panel fully locked into place.     Therefore the homework has been certainly completed here.

The trusted Zen has now taken a noble retirement place with the advent of the Freedom chassis.   Current pricing on the Akasa Freedom chassis varies though approximately £50 before shipping is added which brings us to the overall value of the chassis.     For £50 you cannot go wrong for those looking at an aesthetically pleasing, simple to upgrade chassis which will easily look good wherever you place it.   The construction and attention to detail (even the finer points) are well thought out.   Taking into account the usage of the name for the Chassis and its supporting range of products you cannot go wrong here for it's simplistic cost and functionality.

Page 1 - Introduction
Page 2 - System Set Up and Tests
Page 3 - Test Results
Page 4 - Conclusions and Award