The Exterior II
Of course, the SB81P's exterior skin is lightweight aluminium, anodised black.The left side of the chassis holds the perforated holes for the main chassis body, along the bottom, with a further set of holes for the CPU fan to exhaust hot air to the outside of the case. Yep, that's right, the ICE cooler no longer resides near the back of the chassis on the P-series, instead sitting at the front, venting air to the left.
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The right side matches up, with vents for the main chassis body and intake holes for the air that's fed to the ICE cooler and the exhaust fan.
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That means there's bound to be changes round the back, with no ICE cooler there anymore.
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The two top fans cool the new HDD space at the top of the chassis, a brand new thermal zone for the P-series. The larger fan in the middle is for cooling the brand new 350W power supply.
That makes five fans in total. Two for the CPU cooling zone, two for the top HDD zone and one for the PSU. Add a discrete graphics card to that mix and you'll probably push a half dozen whirring blighters in there. The SB81P is noisy then? I'll tell you later.
A close up of the ports at the rear reveals a fair chunk of the SB81P's base specification, something I'll cover in detail soon, after the interior exam.
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Serial and VGA sit at the left, a tiny clear CMOS button is next, followed by FireWire400 and PS/2 for mouse and keyboard. A brace of USB2.0 ports sit snugly underneath the RJ-45 port for the on-board networking, with the audio connectivity grouped together on the far right. You'll notice coax digital out, optical Toslink digital input and output, and support for eight discrete speakers.
As good looking as the P-series is externally, all the action is internal. Let's go look.
