Aftershock Tremor: A compact DIY PC built for you
- < Prev
-
Page 1 of 3 - Introduction
Page 1 of 3
- Next >
Introduction
Convenience and upgradeability aren’t mutually exclusive
Not all PC gamers want to build their own systems, which is why they turn to pre-built, boutique models like the ASUS ROG G20AJ and the Alienware X51. These systems cost a pretty penny (they look pretty too), but are ready to go right out of the box and often come with comprehensive warranty and on-site support.
However, one gripe we have with such PCs is that they often come loaded with a lot of bloatware. It’s as if someone used your PC and installed a whole lot of their own programs on it. The manufacturer doesn’t quite let you forget that you bought the system from them, and for better or worse, they’re always there with you.
The Aftershock Tremor is a slightly different beast in the pre-built PC market. While the system still ships to you fully assembled, it has just your Windows operating system installed and contains no superfluous programs. This essentially means you also get more free hard drive space to work with. Furthermore, instead of being chock full of OEM parts, the Tremor houses consumer hardware that you could purchase yourself.
Many of the pre-assembled systems out there look good and are exceedingly convenient, but all this comes with certain trade-offs. Because these systems are often built with OEM parts and utilize non-standard cases and hardware, upgradeability is often limited.
As a result, the Tremor straddles the middle ground between committed system builders and gamers who wouldn’t go near the system assembly process with a 10-foot pole. If you want both convenience and the option to upgrade individual hardware components in the future, the Tremor is probably right up your alley.
Design
The Tremor uses the Corsair Carbide Air 240 micro-ATX and mini-ITX case, a small form factor windowed chassis that utilizes a dual-chamber design to separate your motherboard and graphics card from the hard drives and power supply. The original Corsair insignia on the front has also been subtly replaced with Aftershock’s own logo.
Our review unit came in brushed black, but Aftershock also offers it in Arctic White at no additional cost since it's also one of the default color options available from Corsair. But if you'd like something a little more fancy and unique, you can opt for a custom paint job by Modbot, with pricing subject to the nature of individual designs.
The front of the case is a sleek, minimalist facade. Half of it is taken up by the perforated fan vents that allow the two 120mm intake fans to draw air into the case. A series of raised ridges bifurcate the vents, effectively dispelling any accusations of plainness that could be leveled at the Tremor. The power and reset button, hard drive LED indicator, headphone jacks are located on the other half of the front panel, in addition to separate jacks for a headphone and microphone and two USB 3.0 ports.
Moving around to the back of the case, the Tremor sports four USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, and a PS/2 port for legacy peripherals. The rear I/O panel also features a Gigabit LAN port and five audio ports, the latter of which is handled by the onboard Realtek ALC892 audio codec. When it comes to display connectors, you’ll have your pick of a legacy D-Sub connector, DVI-D and HDMI. Wireless reception is handled by the two antennae on the motherboard’s rear I/O panel. These are screwed on and can be removed if you wish to rely on a wired LAN connection throughout.
However, you’ll probably be more interested in hooking up your display to the discrete Zotac GeForce GTX 970. The rear of the dual-slot card plays host to one DVI-D port, one DVI-I port, one HDMI port, and a single DisplayPort connector.
The case’s dual-chamber design also allows for neater cable management and better airflow to the CPU and graphics card, which definitely need more cooling than the storage drives and power supply in the rear compartment. Here's a look at the rear chamber and the tangle of cables that it hides from view:
In the cooling department, the Tremor ships with two 120mm intake fans, in addition to a 120mm exhaust fan at the top. If you require additional cooling, the top of the case will accommodate one more 120mm fan. There’s also space for two rear 80mm fans, two 120mm fans at the bottom, and one more 120mm fan on the other side. These are nice options to have, but most users will probably not have much use for them.
Finally, for the least functional but most eye-catching feature of all - chassis lights. Aftershock lets you add on a multi-color custom remote lighting solution by Deepcool for S$40, and we have to say it's pretty snazzy. The lights are provided by an LED lighting strip that borders the windowed side panel so you get even lighting all around.
And the best part? You can customize the color you want from up to 15 different options, choose from a selection of lighting effects, and even adjust the brightness of the LEDs. With options for flashing or fading effects, the Tremor has some serious gaming cred going for it.
We also prefer this method of lighting control versus that on the ASUS ROG G20AJ, which requires you to enter the ASUS Command Utility to tweak the lighting effects. The remote allows you to cater to your every whim and fancy on-the-fly, and if you're feeling really capricious, you can go right ahead and switch up the lighting scheme in the middle of a game (no need to Alt-Tab at all)!
If we had to pick one thing to improve on, that would be the inclusion of custom uni-sleeved power supply cables. The current cabling is neat for sure, but it lacks a certain punch and ends up looking rather plain through the acrylic side panel window. Things liven up considerably when you turn the LEDs on, but uni-sleeved cables would still be an exceedingly nice touch.
Hardware
Our review unit of the Tremor features a quad-core Intel Core i7-4790 processor, which has a base frequency of 3.6GHz and boost frequency of 4.0GHz. Aftershock has paired this with an ASRock H97M-ITX/AC mini-ITX motherboard. And as we mentioned earlier, all the PSU cables can be routed to the second chamber behind the motherboard tray, which creates a really clean and neat front chamber with little to impede air flow.
As you can see from the below photo, there's also quite a bit of space toward the front of the case, which means you'll be able to fit a much longer GPU (up to 290mm) in there. NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan X, anyone?
However, the mini-ITX form factor of the ASRock H97M-ITX/AC means that there is only a single PCIe 3.0 x16 slot at the bottom edge of the board. It looks like multi-GPU setups are out of the question here.
The ASRock motherboard also comes with a dedicated Wireless 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.0 module, which connects to the two antennae located on the board’s rear I/O panel.
On the graphics side, the Tremor utilizes a Zotac GeForce GTX 970 card, which is actually a lot shorter than the full-sized NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 reference card in the ASUS ROG G20.
Our unit also comes with 16GB of DDR3 1600MHz RAM, which should be plenty for both gaming and memory-hungry applications like photo editing.
The rear storage compartment behind the motherboard tray houses the storage drives. The Tremor comes with a 120GB OCZ Arc 100 OS drive and an additional 2TB Toshiba mechanical hard drive for storage. The 2.5-inch SSD sits toward the front of the chassis in its own tool-free drive cage. From the looks of it, there’s space for two more of such drives.
3.5-inch drives are installed at the rear of the case in their own tool-free bays. The chassis can accommodate up to three such hard drives.
The power supply is a 600 watt Superflower model, which should supply enough power if you wish to get a slightly more powerful graphics card in the future.
- < Prev
-
Page 1 of 3 - Introduction
Page 1 of 3
- Next >