DimasTech Easy Bench V2 Table - Review

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DimasTech Easy Bench 2 Table - Review.



While doing our 'motherboard Living Reviews' over the last year, I've been fighting a losing battle with messy wires, cardboard boxes, optical drives and PSUs, so when the DimasTech Bench Table V2 came along, I was very keen to see what it could do.

What on earth is a DimasTech Easy Bench Table then?

Well, it's a very simple bit of kit, yet no-one else really does them like this.

One scenario for the use of a bench table would be someone who regularly changes hardware (maybe testing, benching, reviewing etc) but needs the hardware to be out on display so it is easily accessible.

The DimasTech Bench Table is basically a housing/stand for your gear rather than a case.

You can put the motherboard on top, there are brackets for several sizes of fans, brackets for optical and hard drives as well as more specialized brackets for a range of water cooling gear.

The main part of the chassis comes in a number of different flavours and you can choose what kind of radiator holes you need when you place your order.

You can also choose the powder coating colour (I've gone for gloss black) and there are quite a few add on options, such as the "Hard Bench" top unit, or you can buy the "Easy Bench" plus all the accessories (minus the Hard Bench), which is what we have here.

Anyway, on with the review...

Index

1. Index & Intro
2. About DimasTech
3. The Package & Contents - Me, Myself & Polystyrene
4. The Package & Contents - Part 2
5. The Accessories - A Full Set Of Brackets
6. The Accessories - Bits & pieces
7. Building Up The Easy Bench V2
8. Conclusion

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About DimasTech.

DimasTech is a new production & commerce reality that focuses his attention on advanced and extreme personal computer cooling systems

Our production is based on the most advanced construction & efficient professional refrigeration technologies in order to achieve the highest performances possible.

Famous among the extreme (and non-extreme) overclock community, DimasTech, produces solutions that will guarantee the perfect cooling you need, either you are in idle or full-load mode and to ensure maximum power efficiency in those fields that require more calculating power.

Each product is released upon specific customer profile and needs till the maximum customization possibile, with total customer satisfaction.

Our philosophy is based on:

• Specific know-how
• Experience
• Customer satisfaction
• Research & Development

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The Package & Contents.

Me, Myself & Polystyrene.

The EB2 ships in a large white cardboard box filled with polystyrene flakes and dust.

I would advise anyone that is planning on unpacking one of these to do it outside - the dust and bits get everywhere, and that brings me onto my first point.

All of the pieces are packed "naked" inside the box in this dusty stuff, so everything needed a thorough cleaning before it could be photographed.



As the dust is polystyrene, when you try to wipe it off, you generate static and of course the dust sticks!

A Pledge Duster did the trick in the end.
After separating the various bits and pieces from the dust, we are left with some rather fine looking gear...



Continued below...

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The Package & Contents - Part 2.

The EB2 chassis is made up of two main parts, the top half, which is a kind of upside down taco shell design and then there is a large plate that bolts unto the bottom and creates the ground floor.

The first thing that becomes apparent when you handle the EB2 is that the build quality is excellent.

Everything is made from 1mm thick steel plate which makes for a really solid platform.

The entire chassis is powder coated and finished to a very high standard.

As with most powder coating, there is a small amount of orange peel effect, but this isn't a problem at all and unless you are looking for it, you won't notice it.

To be brutally honest, I wasn't expecting much from the finish, but I'm really impressed - So far, so good!

The Front.

The front right hand side proudly displays the DimasTech logo, and on the left hand side are two holes for the supplied on/off & reset switches which we will get to later.

The three large oval slots at the front and back are for cable and tubing management, more on those later.



The Back.



The left Hand Side.

These holes are pre-cut for the Thermochill PA120.x series of radiators (Other makes of radiator spacing are available).



The Right Hand Side.

Not much to see here - The only thing of note is that the side is open for easy access.



The Top.

This is where the motherboard sits on top of some elongated stand offs which we will get to later on..

There are plenty of holes to pass cables through, more on those later too.



The Underside.

The two holes on the left and right are for the supplied rubber feet (See The Accessories).



The Bottom Panel.

As with the rest of the EB2, the bottom panel is 1mm thick steel plate and is pre-drilled with all the holes necessary to fit the drive bays, PSU bracket and other accessories.

There are also six holes (three either side) around the left and right edges of the panel where it bolts to the top half of the chassis.

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The Accessories - A Full Set Of Brackets.

This version of the EB2 comes with "all the accessories", which means a full set of brackets and a full set of thumbscrews.

Mine arrived with no thumbscrews, and apparently, they tend to fall out of the holes in the box that you lift it with! - I have them now, so on we go.

In no particular order, here are the brackets - Again, these are all heavy steel plate, powder coated and finished to a very high standard -Really nice actually.

3.5" Hard Drive Cage - Holds 4 Devices



120mm Fan Bracket

Overhead bracket.



120mm Fan Bracket No2

This one fires at motherboard from side on.



120mm Fan Bracket No3

The tallest of the 120mm brackets - I will experiment with these and see what works best and where.



Water Cooling Bracket

This is designed to hold a Laing D5 Variomatic water pump and a tubular type reservoir (Possibly EK? - I have one of those so I will check it out later).

I don't have a Laing D5 pump though, so I will have to find a way to fit a DDC on there.



PSU Bracket

Unlike the other brackets, this one feels very flimsy and thin. It doesn't need to take any real weight as the PSU lies on it's side on the foam mat - I think this is more of a convenience thing to keep things in place, but I'll post my findings later.



92mm Fan Bracket

I tend to use an 80mm or 92mm fan over my RAM while testing/benching, so this is a welcome sight...a bracket that positions the fan directly above the memory slots - marvellous!



80mm Fan Bracket

This one blows across the motherboard.



5.25" Cage - Holds Three Devices

This is a pretty standard 5.25" cage, and three devices is plenty for a benching set up.



PCI/PCI-E section Bracket

When you hold this one in your hand, you can really feel that it's well made and of excellent quality - It even made me smile at one point

Of course, you don't have to use this, but if you have a larger card fitted, it will stop it wobbling about and that's the whole point of the EB2, keeping everything tidy, secure and in one place, yet still accessible.

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The Accessories - Bits & Pieces.

Lurking in the box is a large bag of assorted screws, nuts, bolts, washers and bits and pieces, a bag of thumb screws, switches and feet for the chassis.

There's also an anti vibration foam mat supplied to go underneath the PSU.



On/Off & Reset Switches - These are pretty standard push once type switches, spring loaded and they fit into place with a nut that fastens to the collar of the switch.

They are nicely soldered, sleeved and shrink wrapped and have the appropriate jumpers on the opposite end.



There are four sturdy, rubber/plastic/metal feet and ten of the elongated stand offs.



Lets build it all up and see how it looks...

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Building up the Easy Bench V2.


The EB2 didn't come with any instructions and DimasTech directed me to a thread on XS for instructions (not sure which one because they didn't give me a link), but anyway, XS was down, so I had to guess what went where.

It's not rocket science, but as with all flat pack furniture and anything with many pieces and lots of pre-drilled holes and no instructions, it's easy to build it wrong (twice ).

Firstly, I fitted the lower panel - back to front to begin with.

The first thing that struck me was how the holes lined up perfectly, and that made the fitting of the nuts and bolts nice and easy**.

Next, I went for the 5.25" cage, this goes on the left**.

And then the 3.5" cage on the right - both cages are held in place by four m4 nuts, bolts and washers**.

**I have stumbled upon a major design flaw and one which I am unable to fix without drilling the bottom plate or bending the drive cages.

For air cooling, the drive cages fit perfectly, but if I want to add a Thermochill radiator on the left (which the V2 table is advertised as being able to do), you need to move the 5.25" cage over to the right, but then the holes don't quite line up.

To make the holes line up, you have to bend the cage inwards slightly and it all looks fine until you try and fit any 5.25" devices into the lower two slots - they simply wont fit because its a few MM too narrow.

If I swap the cages over and have the 3.5" on the left, the holes for the 5.25" line up, but then the 3.5" doesn't.

At this time, I am unable to build up the table because I need to be able to fit three 5.25" devices.

This problem could have been easily fixed by including slots instead of holes for the 5.25" part of the bottom plate.

I have emailed Dimastech and will update with their reply here. Update: Two weeks later and still no response from Dimastech. Chilledpc said that would contact Dimastech for me, but they haven't got back to me either.

You can see the taper in the 3.5" cage towards the bottom.



I thought it best to fit the front on/off/reset switches sooner rather than later while I could still reach into that area.

The switches themselves are pretty generic and plasticky, but they are nicely sleeved and soldered - In fairness, most people that buy an EB2 probably won't use these much, but if you don't like them, they are easy to replace.

They are held in place by a single nut. Getting the nut to grip the thread on the switch can be a bit tricky, so have the swear box ready at this point.


When in place, the switches actually look quite good!



Rather than do a step by step build, I'm just going to build it all up, photograph it and go through it like that.

The front of the chassis.

• PA120.2 - Left
• Western Digital Raptor 74GB / Samsung 320Gb SATA II - Centre
• Scythe Kama Meter - Top Right
• Scythe Kama Panel - Mid Right
• Samsung DVDRW - Bottom Right

The Right Hand Side.

You can see the tallest 120mm overhead fan fitted, this is the only one I'll be using for now.

You can also see the XSPC pump/res fitted to the DDC pump on the right.

All the cabling is tucked away and tidied up with velcro ties.



A better shot of the overhead 120mm fan bracket.

It would be great if they could include the kind of nuts that you use for holding water blocks in place for holding the fan brackets, this would make the fitting and removal much easier.



Here you can see how the PSU bracket screws to the PSU with the supplied (or not) thumbscrews.

You can also see the XSPC/DDC pump/res here - It's an excellent fit, although it had to be held in place with cable ties, more on that next.



I've sat the pump/res on an anti-vibration gel mat and I've also placed a piece of this gel behind the res to stop it vibrating against the upright section of the plate - This actually works really well and is worth considering if you haven't got a D5 pump.



Next we have the back of the water cooling plate and on the right we have the PA120.2 Radiator.



A wider shot of the water cooling set up.

I have looped the tubing like this so that I am able to remove the North Bridge water block or the CPU block independently of eachother.



The left hand side.

I was going to add a 120mm radiator, but things didn't work out as planned and there wasn't quite enough room, so a 120mm fan and grill will go there and that can cool the hard drives.

This brings me onto another slightly odd problem.

The holes for the fan screws are smaller than normal, which means that if you try and use standard aluminium (or steel for that matter) screws, they just strip themselves of thread. The steel is very thick on the side panels, so you need to use a different type of screw and a plastic washer to secure things to the case.



Another view.



An overhead shot of the overhead fan!



A closer look at the PCI/PCI-E card retention bracket.

As I mentioned earlier, this is really nicely made and the only negative thing that I would say about it is the fact that it has been given slots instead of holes to be mounted on. This type of bracket wouldn't need to slide around as far as I'm aware.



Finally, the whole thing.



Next, conclusion...

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Conclusion.



It's been five weeks since I first took delivery of the Dimastech Easy Bench Table V2, and the review would have been finished in a few days had there not been items missing and some bizarre design problems.

I need to get the bad parts out of the way first:

The drive cages - There is absolutely no need for this, it is a simple design error and could be rectified by having slots in the base instead of holes.

Another problem was that to remove any drives, you need to undo the thumb screws, which is insanely difficult because the cages are so close together. You need to remove the entire cage, or the bottom plate, both of which are extremely awkward jobs once you have everything fitted.

On the left hand side of the motherboard area are slots for fan brackets - I was puzzled to see that the end slot is missing, so in effect, you can't cool anything around the South Bridge area of the board - Not a problem on Intel boards, but think Nvidia!

The water cooling bracket - There were a couple of issues with this, the main one being that it is drilled for quite specific pieces of equipment, so if you haven't got that particular equipment, you are going to have to get creative - It's not a massive deal, just an annoyance - let's have some DDC holes in there!

The other problem with the bracket is that it is too flexible when fitted in place - Just look at the pictures, it starts to bend backwards. My solution to this would be to make the plate slightly thicker and the lower part of the bracket about 2 inches longer and move the mounting holes further inside the chassis.

Putting the design problems aside, the Easy Bench V2 is just awesome! - Apart from the drive cages, the fit and finish of everything else is top notch and oozes quality.

I was particularly impressed by the powder coating, it is quite resilient to knocks and scratches and it looks fantastic.

There are fan brackets for every eventuality - High, low, big, medium and small and they will fit practically all round the motherboard area.

If, like me, you are constantly changing motherboards, the EB2 is a breath of fresh air - all your wiring is out of the way and everything is neat and tidy, including the water cooling gear.

The footprint of the EB2 is quite large, and especially so if you use the water cooling bracket, so be aware of that when purchasing.

Another thing to consider when buying one of these is to get your retailer to make sure that everything is present in the box before they send it, otherwise you could be waiting a couple of weeks for parts.

To sum up, I'm liking the Dimastech Easy Bench Table V2 more and more as I use it - It is a highly specialised piece of kit and certainly won't appeal to everyone, but if you are a bencher, reviewer, tester or you just want a totally different kind of case, this is well worth a look.

If Dimastech manage to fix the problems that I mentioned above, this will be a five star product, but in it's current state, it gets 4 stars from me.

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Diggy Wiggy

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That thing looks fantastic (excellent photos BTW). I reckon it looks better than alot decent cases i have seen recently.
I love how easy it looks to get at everything, which i suppose is the idea.
The RAM blower mount is a nice addition too.

Did you use your phase unit with this at any point? i wondered if it made using it more practical.

How easy would you say it could be as a tower replacement to live with for day to day use?