A+ BlackPearl II Phoenix AZ

Black Pearl II could well be the name of a dreadful pirate movie, and this case is just as poorly devised as the third 'Pirates of the Caribbean' movie. It doesn't make a terrible first impression when you extract it from its box, thanks to the solid front fascia, but as soon as you remove the side panel, a host of problems confront you - rather like finding weevils in your ship's supplies and water in the powder kegs.

Internally, the Black Pearl II looks extremely familiar - at least it does if you've worked on Custom PC for the past five years. Its structure is similar to that of the Lian Li PC65B, a case we reviewed in Issue 1. A broad metal strip runs along the length of the case before sweeping down the front fascia to provide support for the four 5.25in drive bays. Beneath the strip is a cage for four 3.5in drives. The cage is rotated so that the drives will sit at a 90-degree angle from the front panel. We're often critical of this arrangement, as the metal framework that supports the disks tends to block the air that's pulled in through the front intake by the front fan. However, this assumes that the case has a front intake, which the Black Pearl II doesn't, as the front fascia is solid metal. The front 120mm fan has to pull air through holes in the 10mm lip of the front fascia. Any air that does make it inside is then exhausted by a rear 120mm fan. There are no further fan mounts.

Unlike Lian Li cases of old, the Black Pearl II has distinctly ropey build quality. It's a cheap aluminium case, which means that the metal is extremely thin and flexible. This includes the metal strip and cage that support the drives. Externally, the aluminium panels look fine but they don't feel solid or robust. A fan controller and small LCD are integrated into the front, but we had problems making it change the speed of the fans.

The system inside the Black Pearl II failed the stress test after 36 minutes, with the GPU about to roast at 103ûC. While the CPU was cooler at 89ûC, its temperature was still rising at a fast rate when the PC crashed.

The infrared image reveals the scale of the Black Pearl II's problems. Even though the hard disk is positioned immediately next to a 120mm fan, it's clear that the disk is extremely hot, showing how poorly the vents at the front allow cool air to access the case.

The area under the graphics card is also hot, a problem that's compounded by two additional factors. Firstly, the case has only a single 120mm exhaust fan to expel hot air, and it's completely overwhelmed. Secondly, the disk caddy sits up against the PCB of the GeForce GTX 280, so there's no easy way for hot air to reach the exhaust fan. This means the CPU and the surrounding area become very hot, reaching 64.2ûC.

This forces the PSU fan to draw in very hot air, and the temperature of its casing was over 40ûC. We used a 50ûC-rated Corsair unit, but with hot components, a cheaper PSU will probably fail quickly in this case.

The ineffective nature of the single exhaust fan is further underlined by the high temperature of the roof of the case. There's clearly a lot of hot air trapped there that the fan isn't managing to expel, and this underlines the benefits of the large roof fans sported by Antec's Nine and Twelve Hundred cases.

Conclusion

The Black Pearl II is a woeful effort that deserves to sink without a trace. It takes a basic and largely ineffective design that's more than five years old and manages to lessen its effectiveness even further. The quality of the materials used is poor, and as the tests show, it's completely inadequate at cooling a modern, high-speed PC.

Author: James Gorbold, Antony Leather & Alex Watson

A+ BlackPearl II