Raijintek Asterion Plus Case Review

Up Close:  Exterior

Let’s imagine the Raijintek Asterion is a girl in a pub or club.  You’ve spotted her from afar and…let’s be honest, you’re totally smitten.  But what do you do?  Do you approach her?  Surely someone that attractive isn’t going to be interested in you?  But wait, what if the beauty is only skin deep?  What if she’s superficially stunning but sounds like a Grimbsy Fish wife and has all the social grace of a horny pit bull with a bad case of mange?  Best you walk away?  Best you approach?

  

 

Best we get back to the plot, or so says Tom!  OK then ladies, the Asterion Plus has a steel chassis over which is wrapped an Aluminium skin.  It measures 525x231x491 (HxWxD), which makes it large(ish) but not too big.  It has essentially full height and full width acrylic panels on both sides, so best you make sure you do a proper tidy wiring job back there.  While we’re lusting over the exterior, if it hasn’t already caught your attention, then you might like to know that the whole lot is genuine 100% hair line brushed satin effect Aluminium, and my god is it gorgeous.  Of the black isn’t doing it for you then you’ll be delighted to know that’s it’s also available in a naked aluminium and that if you’re not a big fan of the acrylic panels Raijintek do another version of the case which has a full size tempered glass panel.

  

 

Both side panels are removable and have largish, although still quite discrete handles with which you release them.  The panels, are better thought of though as doors, but more of that later.  The other thing of note in the image below is that the front intake ventilation is by means of full height strips of firm steel mesh panels.  The panels are both effective, aesthetic, and discrete.  Seriously ladies, just look at the quality of the build in the image below.

  

 

Having orgasm’d over the exterior as a whole, it’s about time we spent our exhausted lust on the detail of the exterior.  The roof blends effortlessly in to the side panels with a firm and flush ventilation panel covering the larger part of its presence.  Towards the front we find no less than four USB 3.0s, and a brace of HD audio sockets.  The discrete power button is located just a an inch or so down the vertical surface of the front panel.  So that’s it then, a pretty standard front I/O?  well it would be, if it weren’t for the presence of the slit, a slit that points the way to a slim line 5.25″ drive.  Do we really need one in 2017?  Maybe not, but we love the way Raijintek have allowed for the option without compromising the aesthetic with a fecking great hole in the front of the case.

  

 

Although it looks pretty well fixed in place, that roof panel is actually easily removed and doing so reveals what appears to be a plethora of water cooling options.  From the tech spec, we already know that the Asterion will take a 360 or 280 rad up in to roof, and the position of these holes and slots confirms that this is very much on the cards.

  

 

Yeah, I know you’re meant to be looking at the pretty standard rear I/O, with its 120mm fan and its eight expansion slots, but what you’re actually looking at is the suicide doors.  Don’t try and deny it, we know how you ladies work.  What we should point out though is that they do not have a brown/copper tinge to them, that’s just a product of one crazy messed up white balance on our camera that we just couldn’t seem to get right.  They are in fact smoked black and look….well they look as sexy as feck to be honest.

  

 

This is the bottom of the case.  In the grand scheme of things it’s really not that interesting, in fact, we’d be interested to know how many of you have actually taken the time to look at his page.  What is of interest though is that he filters are screwed in place.  OK we could say this is ridiculous, but let’s be honest, how many of you clean you filters on such a regular basis that his would be a serious encumbrance???… yeah we thought so.