Closer Look – What’s In The Box?
The Sharkoon CA700 chassis comes in a huge box. Inside the box is, a surprise, another box. Inside that box are the chassis and everything you may need for its installation, including screws, user’s manual, top and front covers, PCIe riser, and additional frames. The first amazing thing is how everything is well protected and packaged. Looking at how it’s prepared, we don’t have to worry that anything can be damaged in transport.
The chassis is very heavy, and by itself, it weighs 17kg. The box has a description of 26.6kg in total. This is without the PSU and other PC components.
The CA700 is made of thick steel, which you can feel. It for sure won’t bend anywhere, and it’s made precisely, so everything fits perfectly.
The tempered glass panel is nearly 4mm, and it’s made in the same asymmetric shape as the back panel.
The moving parts, so front and top covers have protective pads so we won’t scratch the paint while moving them.
Sharkoon is pre-installing five ARGB, 120mm fans which can work with the attached on the back, controller/splitter. Everything is compatible with ARGB/RGB technologies from various brands. We had a chance to test it with ASUS, Biostar, and Gigabyte motherboards. This review will show the ASUS Strix B550-XE motherboard, while other motherboards will be presented in the upcoming reviews.
Sharkoon is adding a PCIe riser and additional frames to install graphics card(s) vertically. There is a two and three-slot option, so even the thickest graphics cards will fit. The downside of the riser is that some new graphics cards don’t work correctly at PCIe 4.0 mode. In our case, ASUS Strix RTX3070 was working, but its performance was highly limited. Probably the same will be with higher AMD cards which are more sensitive to risers than Nvidia cards.
The chassis has an open-frame design what means there is optimal airflow. On the other hand, we can’t count on any dust filters, so we will need to clean our PC more often. The CA700 is dedicated to users changing components more often, so I don’t think it will be a big problem.
I like the fact we can install two 360 radiators, one on the top and one on the side/back panel, next to the motherboard. It’s perfect for custom water cooling. Those users who are more into AIO liquid coolers will be satisfied with the top mounting spot, just as in our review.
On the back of the motherboard plate is enough space for cable management. There could be a bit more space, but all cables from a modular Sharkoon SilentStorm Zero Cool 850W PSU with additional cable extensions still fit (extensions are not included on the photos in this review).
Next to the PSU, we can install additional storage, SSD, or HDD. The same on the backplate, and next to the motherboard, there are placements for storage devices. We have installed one SATA SSD next to the motherboard, but we could fit there two more. Nowadays, most users stick with M.2 SSD, so the plate with three 2.5″ installation spots can be exchanged into a radiator mount space. The CA700 gives us various opportunities but how we use them depends on our imagination and probably budget.
