Just like many other case manufacturer's, Superpower isn't exactly a household name. While they aren't the largest manufacturer of cases by any means, they're not little either with an output capacity of up to 600,000 units. That capacity comes in the form a state of the art facility in Shanghai, China that Superpower setup four years ago. As a company, they've been in the case business since 1989 and thus have a fair amount of experience.

The first case AnandTech received from Superpower is their Landmark series KS-299 - a fairly solid ATX mid tower that gets the job done pretty well with a bit of style thrown in for good measure.

With those measurements, the KS-299 is a bit bulkier than most other cases with similar expansion room. But those dimensions promise to keep everything roomy inside. The rest of the specs are quite promising, with good expansion room in this class, as well as a number of interesting features.

Design

The KS-299 is a mid tower capable of holding any standard ATX, microATX, or AT motherboard. Thanks to its unusually large depth, it can easily accept an extended ATX motherboard board as well. An above average 4 external 5.25" drive bays complement a more typical 2 external / 1 internal 3.5" bay setup.

The look of the Landmark KS-299 screams Packard Bell when you first see it - the only thing that's missing is the logo. The gray base and contoured plastic side panel are the biggest visual cues producing said look. Whether or not you think this is good or bad is of course a matter of personal opinion. However, that bezel is quite functional and features power, sleep, and reset buttons plus power, sleep, and HD LED's. It snaps in and out of the case frame fairly easily.

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The outer casing, including a cover over the back, is made of heavy duty plastic that won't break easily. Unfortunately, these plastic panels make the already bulky case an inch or so larger in each dimension. Also included is a detachable cable guide that is made of the same plastic. It mounts to the back of the case and can help keep all the cables on the back of your system a little more organized. Vents are available next to the expansion slots and the bottom front of the case. These vents seem barely adequate at a glance - a fact that would be borne out in our tests.

Getting inside is a piece of cake - just look for the arrow on top labeled "Open" (shown at left). Following that arrow leads you to a single standard case screw on the back of the case. It would have been even nicer if Superpower had used a thumbscrew here to make access completely tool-free Once removed, the top panel slides right off the back. A sticker underneath this cover is revealed that explains how to open the side panels - just grab the handle (shown below) and pull up - no screws or clips to get in the way. Unlike many other case designs, putting these covers back on is just as easy as getting them off - anyone can be in and out in seconds.

For those concerned about the wrong people getting in and out so quickly, a small metal tab can be mounted right next to the screw. Those side panels that appeared to be plastic on the outside are just plastic pieces that snap into standard sheet metal. For OEM's with large enough volume, Superpower is willing to produce custom panels and bezels.

Once inside, the drive bay setup is immediately apparent. The four 5.25" bays are permanently mounted to the frame with the three 3.5" bays held below by a single screw. None of the bays use drive rails - simply slide a drive into the bay and secure it with screws.

Although the motherboard tray is not removable, mounting one inside is fairly easy, thanks again to that unusually deep design. It's still not as convenient as a removable tray, but it is faster for OEM's seeking to minimize assembly time. Metal standoffs are permanently mounted in all the required ATX mounting holes, with additional screw in metal standoffs included for any other mounting points on your particular motherboard. Once the standoffs are all in place, the motherboard is simply screwed into place. Front panel cabling is kept tidy since all cables are attached to each other until they split out at the end.

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Cooling is provided by two 80mm fans - one in the power supply and the other at the front of the case. The power supply fan exhausts air out the back of the case while the one at the front draws air in. The front fan is included with the case and features a three pin fan connector. There is a mount for an optional second case fan under the power supply. Case fans mount in plastic holders that simply clip to the case frame.

The power supply is a Superpower designed and manufactured model with 250W of power. A 300W power supply is also an option. It's fully ATX 2.01 compliant and exhausts air as mentioned above. A power switch on the back affords a little more control over the system's power state than the standard ATX soft power - especially in a situation where the system may be locked up and the soft power switch does not respond. Power connections are covered by 4 standard and 1 mini power connector. As can be seen above, the number of ventilation holes on the power supply is minimal and may contribute to not being able to get hot air out of the case.

The Test

As always, we used the procedures outlined in AnandTech's case testing methodology, which includes temperature and noise testing following reader suggestions and requests. We've created a whole page with all the details of the method.

The KS-299 ships standard with a secondary case fan mounted at the bottom front of the case and this is the configuration that we tested it in.

The maximum sustained temperatures shown above are unfortunately a bit higher than we've found in most other cases. The power supply clearly does a poor job of removing the hot air from the system and there aren't enough vents to allow cool air in.

AnandTech has found that CPU temperature does not vary greatly from case to case as long as a quality heatsink/fan combination are used.

In the KS-299, hard drive temperature started out fairly high while just idling and rose quite a bit more, albeit slowly, to a lofty 120F.

With the ambient temperature near 75F, there's no reason the case temperatures should be this high. At idle, the KS-299 was already a full 10 degrees above the Palo Alto ATCX, and by the end of the 1 hour tests hit 102F and possibly could have continued to rise.

After the above data, it's no surprise that average temperatures were unusually high inside all areas of the KS-299. Temperatures could of course be lowered through the use of the optional tertiary case fan, especially in a situation like this where ventilation holes were minimal.

Noise

Conclusion

With the Landmark KS-299, Superpower has provided a case with average construction, but a number of useful features that allow it to stand out from the competition. The design is clean and well executed for a very solid case that's extremely easy to get in and out of - all for a very reasonable $70.

Unfortunately, the biggest problem is keeping a hot system cool. AnandTech's testbed does use quite hot components, so most standard systems should be fine. However, the KS-299 is definitely not the best situation from maximal overclocking. Adding the optional tertiary case fan would most likely help the situation considerably.