The BlackPearl WCR Edition is the result of a collaborative project between A+ and Lian Li to produce what the former describes as 'a perfect case for all high-end gamers'. In fact, the case bears an eerie resemblance to the Lian Li PC-V2100 Plus II.
Unlike the BlackPearl II, which has clearly been optimised for air cooling, the BlackPearl WCR Edition is intended to be equally at home with water cooling. The most obvious sign of this is the two vacant 120mm fan mounts in the roof of the case - perfect for a dual 120mm-fan radiator. A further two 80mm fans can be added to the rear of the case just above the PSU bay.
If you're planning on air-cooling your PC, the BlackPearl WCR Edition has only two fans as standard - a 120mm intake fan at the front and a 120mm intake at the rear. No, that wasn't a typo; the BlackPearl WCR Edition doesn't have any exhaust fans as standard. Even worse, the front fan is partially obstructed by the 3.5in internal drive bays and has to draw air through a row of tiny holes in the bottom of the case.
Meanwhile, the rear fan has a duct over it to direct air over the CPU socket; this is great news for the CPU cooler, but bad news for the rest of the motherboard and its expansion cards. It means the main chamber housing the motherboard has no direct external source of cool air. A+ has also neglected to fit a fan guard to the rear fan, so when you reach behind your PC to plug in a USB device, you run the risk of giving your fingers a good chop.
The poor design doesn't end there. Most of the bottom of the case is drilled with ventilation holes, but the section from which the PSU has to breathe in air is solid metal. The entire case is made from extremely thin aluminium too, so it's rather flimsy.
A+ has fitted a fan controller to the front panel, but it's very unintuitive to use, and has a tendency to rev up the fans to maximum speed regardless of which combination of buttons you press.
The main chamber is compatible with motherboards up to E-ATX size, but given the shortage of intake fans and total lack of exhaust fans, we wouldn't recommend installing a dual-processor motherboard in this case. There are seven 5.25in drive bays, plus eight internally accessible 3.5in drive bays in the bottom of the case. A+ has cut several holes between the lower and upper chambers through which cables can pass but, as the infrared photo shows, there's no cable management system, so it's tricky to build a neat PC inside the case.
Our suspicions about the lack of exhaust fans limiting its cooling potential were proven correct when the system overheated and crashed after just 25 minutes of stress testing. This earns the BlackPearl WCR Edition the dubious honour of being the third-worst cooling case in this Labs test. At the point of system failure, the CPU was running at 83ûC, so it clearly wasn't the cause of the crash. However, the graphics card, which receives no cooling, reached an astonishing 104ûC, which explains why the graphics driver crashed so quickly.
The hard disk, meanwhile, was at a far more reasonable 40ûC. To determine if the system would still have overheated with a different graphics card installed, we looked at the temperature sensor log files. Using a complex mathematical formula, we calculated that, had the system finished the hour-long stress test, the CPU would have reached a cool 90ûC, while the hard disk would have hit a dangerously high 58ûC.
Conclusion
While the BlackPearl WCR Edition has some good features, such as the CPU air duct, the lack of cooling for the rest of the system, poor build quality and lack of common-sense features - such as fan guards - means that the BlackPearl WCR Edition is best left to rust on the shelf.
Author: James Gorbold, Antony Leather & Alex Watson
A+ BlackPearl WCR Edition