Got the Observatory case yesterday and spent the evening building in it, overall for the price the build quality is very acceptable. Its nowhere near perfect, some of the metal feel rather thin to the much higher end cases i usually get, (£150+), but looking at it in context its pretty damn good.
Its Just theirs a lot of small things that do let it down slightly though, like cheap feeling thumb screws for the side panel, a lack of any kind of instructions, no sleds for the drive bays, no front dust filter, a pretty small space behind the motherboard tray, no robber grommets on the motherboard tray cable pass through, riveted in 3.5 inch drive bay area (no flexibility) and lastly pretty cheap feeling front I/O panel and buttons.
The LED's on the fans work really well, light is very well dispersed and theirs a wide range of nice looking effects, some more than others! You just connect the molex power to the fan hub, then in the case theirs 2 2 pin connectors, annoyingly both of them are labled Reset_Sw, one of then is your reset switch, the other allows for changing of the LED mode with the button on the case.
To get the remote working, you just hold the ON button at the top of the case for 5 seconds and it should pair.
The Fan hub has 3 channels of control (if im phrasing this right) If you put the front 3 fans in Fan_1 2 and 3 going from top to bottom, theirs some cool effects where the colours almost "flow" down through each fan in like an S shape. Channels 4,5 and 6 are duplicates of 1,2 and 3.
The USB C slot on the top of the case is (bizarrely) an optional accessory that overclockers dont (yet?) stock, i cannot find this anywhere, anybody else want this? I sure do! Where can i get one???
The fans are...OK i guess. Yes, with the fan hub connected they ONLY spin at 100%, their is no PWM control, but they spin so pretty slowly, they're not really noisy at all. They also dont move a great deal of air either though. At least not compared to the noise and strength of my EK Vardar's anyway, they have about 0 static pressure too, even my thin EK Radiators almost have no air coming through them. Il stick with them for now, and actually would like more of them to put in the roof, but again, i cant find them anywhere for sale. I dont wanna have to buy another case just for the fans, even if it somehow does work out cheaper then buying 3x of the Lian-Li Bora 120 RGB fans (which the included fans are, theyre just unbranded, the control box is identical and fan design is the same too). The mounts in the top, front and rear of the case will also accept 140mm fans.
Tempered glass is nice and thick and mounts well to the case, no issues here at all.
You could MAYBE get a 240 mm rad in the roof and one of the front of the case, the issue would be the 12v EPS connector on the motherboard is right where the rad would want to sit, it would be very tight, but i tried it, its not impossible, especially if you have more flexible cables, or individually sleeved cables. A 240 sits well in the front, a 320 again MAY fit but would be stupidly tight. You can definitely get a 120/140 rad/AIO cooler on the rear fan mount no issues as well. As for your Pump & Res. I tried for quite a while last night to get my EK DCP 4.0 pump and X3 Res to fit, theirs just NO good locations to do this with separate items seeing as the res has to be above the pump, any way i tried meant i was interfering with the route for the inlet to the radiator, ended up springing for a EK D5 RGB Pump Res combo unit and this fits in much better to the right of the mobo and left of the radiator just above the HDD mounting area.
Basically, its a bargain for the cost that its currently at. Yes, they have 100% cheeped out on some places, but for the price, you can see why. They could have done all the "nice" things and made is £100/£150+ which still would have been worth it, but id put it firmly in the budget category in terms of general build quality. Shame we dont have any of the accessories for sale though, or some different fan options, a Static pressure upgrade or PWN support would be nice. I believe you could use the Lian-Li Bora 120 fans and possibly almost any RGB fan with the special little connector on them, but not tried it TBH.
I'm really lost with this case, none of my LEDs are working but every fan is.
