George Carlin used to have a bit where he said houses where
were you kept your junk and when you got more junk you just put it in your
house and when the house was full you just got a bigger house. The same thing can be said of PC cases. You start out small, motherboard,, video
card, hard drive, optical drive, a few USB ports, a fan or two for cooling and
you’re all set. Then you start adding
second hard drives, a bunch of USB devices, a second optical drive and you need
more space and thus a bigger case. By
now you’re asking where am I going with this and if this is just another
incoherent rant by a dork on a website but the point I’m trying to make is that
the Ninja 2 case by MGE Corporation
is a pretty good starter house for those looking to store their computer stuff.
The Ninja 2 is
the entry level case in MGE’s new XG line of cases. The Ninja
2 measures 190 X 420 X 440mm and contains 10 drive bays (four external
5.25” bays, two external 3.5” bays, and four internal 3.5” bays). The blue case we received has a nice silver
stripe across the front but MGE also sells black and silver and a silver and
black units. I really liked the blue
color of the case and the unit has a really nice finish to it. It’s not a high-shine polish to it but kind
of a subdued plastic finish that is actually carried over to the metal side
panels. Most people would consider this a bad thing but in this case it’s actually
a good thing as it’s not something you
see every day. It’s certainly a step or
five above your standard beige case.
The front is dominated by a large door that takes up the top
three quarters of the case.. I’ve never
been a big fan of door cases as they make it a pain to get to your optical
drives but the Ninja 2 gets around this by have a slot in the top of the door that
allows you to access the top drive bay even when the door is closed. This is a nice feature even if you don’t have
a matching faceplate for your CD-ROM drive as the beige of most drives will
blend in with the silver stripe to some degree.
On the bottom part of the door is nice silver four edged
ninja star. It’s a little design touch
that gets carried to the side windows but on the front it looks like your
normal logo without being garish or over the top. Below the door is a v-shaped cut-out with
three blue LED’s. Rounding out the
bottom of the front of the case are two buttons (reset and power) with their
own internal LED lights (hard drive activity and power on respectively). The buttons blend in with the front of the
case when it’s off so you really won’t notice them unless you are looking for
them.
On the right side of the case towards the front bottom is a
cluster of ports including two USB ports, two audio ports (headphones and
microphone), and a firewire connection.
The location may be problematic for some (especially if you have the
case on the right side of your desk and have to stretch the cords across them
but it’s still nice to have the front I/O ports as it’s not something you see
on a case this inexpensive.
As I mentioned earlier the left panel is dominated by a much
larger version of the ninja star logo from the front of the case. The center of the star is actually a 3 inch
diameter mesh covered circle which allows for greater air flow into the
case. The back of the case sports a slot
for an 80mm of 92mm fan (not included with the case). The rear fan cover does look a little
restrictive so if you want to increase airflow out you might want to cut it out
and replace with something a little more open air. The back also shows off the 400W power supply
that is included with the case. Both
side panels can be removed using the thumbscrews on the back of the case. Kudos to MGE for not cheaping out and going
with standard screws on the back of the case.
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