Sunbeam UFO Clear Acrylic Case Review

Temperatures and Final Thoughts

To help cool the Intel QX6700 processor a Thermaltake Big Typhoon VX HSF was used, but once again the heat sink was sticking out above where the top panel was supposed to go. The pair of 6-pin PCIe power cables can also be seen sticking out above the top of the case in the above picture. If a standard heat sink, mainstream video card and a motherboard that isn’t branded by NVIDIA the case should do fine, but it’s obvious that it might have some issues with pretty common hardware.

Without the pair of 120mm case fans the system temperature on the EVGA 680i SLI motherboard was found to be 41C with the GPU temperature hovering around 65-66C. This seemed a bit warm for a system with no front or top panel installed, so we added the pair of supplied 120mm fans.

With the case fans installed the system temperature dropped by 4C and the GPU core temperature also decreased by 4-5C, which is a significant decrease in cooling by just adding a couple 120mm case fans!

Final Thoughts and Conclusions:

The Sunbeam UFO ACUF-T acrylic ATX cube computer case looks great, but for the system that we wanted to use it for the case couldn’t be fully enclosed. The majority of users out there don’t have an NVIDIA chipset on their motherboard, but with several generations of NVIDIA boards have SATA connector issues this is worth pointing out. The inability to fit a GeForce 8800 GTX due to it’s length and the height of it’s power connectors is also not uncommon, but applies to several video cards (GeForce 8800 GTX, GeForce 8800 Ultra, ATI HD 2900 XT). If you run an SLI bridge between two video cards the SLI bridge will also stick out above the top of the case. Due to the motherboard, video card and CPU heat sink and fan sizes we were unable to install the side and the top on the Sunbeam UGO ACUF-T acrylic computer case. If the case was an inch or two bigger in every direction these could all be avoided.

Heat was also an issue as the pair of 10,000 RPM Western Digital RaptoX hard drives had no way to be cooled. Using our infrared digital laser pyrometer we were able to find out the temperature on the acrylic glass directly in front of the hard drives, which was found to be around 41C. The other issue that was noted with the case was something a bit unexpected and that is Electromagnetic Interference or EMI. All acrylic cases may be subject to EMI and such should NOT be placed close to other electronic equipment, but even with a PC running in the Sunbeam UFO case we noted interference with our Terk TV36 Medium Directional VHF/UHF/FM Yagi-Uda Antenna that is used to get local TV channels.

Overall we had mixed feelings with the Sunbeam UFO ACUF-T acrylic ATX cube computer case. It fails to fit a vast number of hardware configurations, has EMI issues and the hard drives have no cooling fan near them. If the case was just a bit bigger and had a way to mount a cooling fan on the lower portion of the case we would give it the thumbs up. For now this case is reserved for those that have a simple system. If you have integrated graphics and a factory AMD or Intel heat sink and want a case that isn’t boring then give the UFO a shot. At just $81.99 over at CrazyPC it is a bargain for those that can use it.

Legit Bottom Line: The Sunbeam UFO ACUF-T acrylic ATX cube computer case looks great, but make sure your hardware will fit in it before you order one!