GTR Tech Corporation GT3-BH PC Chassis

GTR Tech Corporation's GT3-BH Peeking Inside Pandora's Box

Remove the side panel, and the inside of the GT3 looks much the same as any other PC chassis, just smaller.  The most obvious differences are the two aluminum cages, placed on either side. The smaller of the two, which is placed near the front of the unit, is used to house a hard drive and one optical drive.  The other cage is the aforementioned Feature Module, and is where the riser cards and possibly a second hard drive are mounted.

Tucked into each corner are two fans, both of which are configured to intake cooler air from outside the unit.  The upper fan brings in air to cool down the CPU/chipset area and possibly the RAM, while the lower is placed directly perpendicular to the video card.  As one might expect, the abundance of cables that a modern PC requires hints at some possible issues down the road.  For example, the power cables originally bunch up directly behind the upper fan while front panel cables including the ones used to light up the logo must find their way around the cages and other components.

The first GT3 that was shipped to us came completely built up with an Athlon 64 X2 6000+, 2GB of RAM, and a GeForce 8800 GTS.  Inside is a tight fit of machinery and metal. In our fully configured unit, the three expansion slots on the riser card were all taken up - 2 by the video card due its large cooler, and one by an audio card. Expansion is obviously limited, although it is rare to have more than two third-party expansion cards installed into an SFF PC these days. Installing a second hard drive limits expansion possibilities further, as the drive would take up one of those three slots.

The PSU was from the FSP Group (i.e. Foxconn), model FSP350-60MB with a maximum output of 350W. Sleeved mesh around the power cables attempts to keep the cabling under control, of which these are tucked in and around the uppermost fan.  The cabling is routed well, although not as neat as some more experienced builders in this arena, such as MSI. The optical drive is a Samsung 324F/DBM and it's piggybacked to the same cage as the hard drive.  Buyers will need to go out and find their own drive, however, as it is not included as part of the default package.  Clearance is tight, as one might expect, especially with the large 8800 GTS installed.  It just fits inside the Feature Module, which itself just fits in behind the lower fan.

Booting up the system was the same as any other, except for the LEDs that really light up the front of the unit.  The logo didn't quite light up the first time, even though it appeared the power cable had been connected properly.  Strangely, it did work later on, even though we hadn't done anything to rectify the situation.  We'll chalk that up to a loose connection.  Other than the LEDs, the other thing we did notice immediately was the unit's noise level.  Those two fans were much louder than we had anticipated.  Obviously air intake is a necessity, but we found the noise level to be a major drawback to the design of the GT3.  Hopefully future revisions will ship with quieter fans.

We should also note that we ran a couple of benchmarks to see if the pre-built GT3 performed as it should. With the aforementioned hardware installed, the GT3 posted an overall score of 8483 in 3DMark06 and 42.44 fps in Need For Speed: Carbon at 1600x1200 with all in-game graphical options set to their highest levels.