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Enlight 7237

I've owned two Enlight cases so far-- this one was the first, which I picked up when ATX was just becoming popular some time in 1996. By the time these pictures were taken in January 2000, this case has seen two motherboards, five processors (plus about 30 other test processors), and more RAM combinations than you can shake a stick at.

The one-piece cover on this case was acceptable at first. As the cover wore, the metal slides began to bend, which means this case is not suitable for heavy use (the new 7237OM3 w/3-piece cover is a different animal here). Fit and finish was adequate.... nice enough when new, not so hot four years later. Drive rails-- these were decent, if sharp if you got careless-- were a new thing, and the removable 3.5"/HD cage was very nice to have at the time. The limited 3.5" HD capacity of two drives was to be limiting, but not a serious issue for me as I soon moved to 5.25" HD bay coolers when I upgraded to a Celeron in September 1998. The four 5.25" bays were my main reason for purchasing this case, and drive rails and all they proved to be useful.

Stock cooling consisted of an 80mm intake fan. After upgrading from Pentiums to Celerons, I discovered I was able to locate a 60mm fan for exhaust behind the CPU, above the first I/O card slot as detailed in the pictures below. I later removed one of the support bars (just this January) to improve airflow. Cooling is decent for an overclocked system, but like most low-priced mid-towers I would recommend 5.25" bay coolers for your 10k rpm SCSI drives. The 60mm backboard fan is very important in keeping things cool, and the new 7237 has an 80mm mount on the backboard.

The motherboard tray swings out, which I found basically useless. The PS mount is fine, but after four years of use this case flexes more than I would like-- in the 3-piece cover you may do what you want to add additional cooling, but I decided in September 1999 to order my Chenbro GENIE instead of shoehorning in some 120mm fans.

Issues with the case are the one-piece cover, a flakey LED attachment, and the front bezel. Use and abuse over the years-- removing the cover entails removing the front bezel, which has a set of small LED electrical connectors-- which the years have done a serious number on it. The stock holes in front of the case were drilled out to approximately 3/16", as were some of the 5.25" blanks for my Globalwin King Kong HD cooler.

As for modifications-- a 60mm backboard fan and enlarging the front fan intake holes are important. The new 7237OM3 seems to be a different beast-- and I hope it is, because it looks much more tweak-friendly than this one. This is a low to midrange case, and while it offers better tweaking than many other cases, it's best saved for the tweaker. Use a nicer case such as a CasEdge 3400T to keep stock, and use this case to hack. If you need more... buy something higher-end such an Addtronics 6890/6896 , or even higher such as a Palo Alto, or the top at Chenbro's GENIE or Lite-On's FS020. I'm happy with what I've gotten out of this case, once I realized what it was for.

What's been in this case...:

  • Initially, an Asus TX97XE motherboard with a variety of Pentium processors, 2x32MB EDO 60ns SIMMs, a Diamond Viper V330 4MB PCI, a Crystalizer TidalWave128, a modem, an Adaptec 2940 Ultra running a Toshiba 12X and a pair of Seagate ST51080N's.
  • Next came a Teac CD-R55S and a P233MMX. Mmmm CD-burning. I found that my ST51080N's couldn't handle 4X though.
  • After two years, in came college and upgrades. An Abit BH6 was used for three days (long story) and later replaced with an Asus P2B. A Celeron 300A overclocked to 464mhz (Globalwin FAB28 heatsink), 192MB of Micron -8E PC100 (later 256MB) an Adaptec 2940UW, an IBM Ultrastar 9ES 9GB UWSCSI, a Toshiba 32X, the same Teac CD-R55S, a shiny new Matrox Millenium G200 8MB and a network card were swapped in. An Enlight 7101 (sold this summer before I got my digital camera) was bought to house the P233.
  • Four months later, my PC was brought home for Christmas, where I performed surgey and swapped in an Abit BH6 r1.01. The Celeron 300A was swapped out for a later production unit in an effort to get 504mhz (initially unsuccessful).
  • A month or so later, attempts to resolve misallocated IRQs result in seventeen hours of attempts to reformat and reinstall Windows 98. Abit is determined to make cheap, very overclockable but crappy motherboards. And we still love them....
  • The Celeron 300A undergoes a change to dual FAB28 (sandwich) heatsinks, and then an Alpha P125C to get 504mhz/2.2v.
  • Come summer 1999, this system is switched to 128MB Micron PC100 and recieves an MSI 6905 v1.1 sloket, and is used to overclock more than 30 C366's.
  • End of summer, the Viper 330 goes back in, the SCSI goes out, a 32X IDE and an IBM 13GB UDMA/66 goes in, the P233 chip is sold (MB and ram still around!) and attention shifts to my new Dual Celeron box.

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