Performance Results

The Automaton is mid-size tower at an affordable budget, we compare to similar size/price cases, like the Antec Three Hundred, Coolermaster CM 690, Ultra Grid, NZXT Tempest and SB’s own 3D Storm.

So here are the results under full system load:



With the performance ranked by CPU temperature the Automaton does quite ok, having only the front and rear fans hooked up the temperature remains well within acceptable rang, noise level is a bit worse though, the plastic housing and thin aluminum panels give plenty of opportunity for vibration noise to travel from the cooling fans through the case structure, and even on a soft underground, you’ll notice this case is up and running.

When we plugged in the side fan the GPU temperatures dropped a tiny bit, but at the same time the front to back airflow path is disturbed and the CPU temperature goes up by ~3°C. So unless you’re running Crossfire/SLI, we wouldn’t recommend hooking up the side fan; it will only add noise (although, measured from the front of the case, this is not picked up by the dBA meter) and will increase CPU temperature overall.

HDD cooling is excellent thanks to the front in-take fan sitting right in front of them!

Conclusive Thoughts

Originally priced at ~$130 it was clear this case did not live up that price tag at all. Shopping around a bit nowadays you can find it for $70-ish which is a much more reasonable price-tag.

But we can’t recommend this case really, when they opted to go with aluminum and low cost, they sacrificed on case sturdiness and overall usability; the only worthwhile feature which you don’t find on entry level cases is the volume control for the headphones on the I/O port, but there are plenty of other areas which are lacking; the case is too small to fit large video cards AND hard drives; the air cooling is ok, but the installed fans in combination with the thin aluminum panels causes lots of vibration noise. The build construction is acceptable at best, there were sharp edges left.

If they made this case in steel, redesigned the side panels, removed the window from the right one, cleaned up the internals and moved the HDD bay around a bit to make room for larger video cards, this case would actually be an option, because in the looks department it doesn’t disappoint:



But unfortunately as it stands, this case doesn’t really stand a chance against the similarly priced competition which offers better features and better finish.

We like to thank Derek from Sunbeamtech for the opportunity to test-drive the Automaton; we hope they don’t bury their plans of the Automaton, but use it as base to tweak it into something great.