The Beantech BT-85 is impeccably constructed, with no sharp edges anywhere to be seen. One thing about the soyo, despite its good build quality, there was certainly not the same level of effort put into its construction as this case, with the sides and top beautifully rounded off.
On the side opposite the rheostat, the beantech BT-85 has USB and firewire connectivity. One of my complaints about the soyo, and all other clear cases we have seen so far is the lack of these now mandatory ports – even the cheapest cases normally come with some form of front connectivity as standard. In keeping with the rest of the case, Beantechs implementation is stylish and effortlessly simple.
The controller circuitry is just to the right of the main front fans, and can be connected to your mainboard via some very stylish silver braded cables. Ugly beige cables snaking through your case will not really do you any favours when it comes to aesthetics, and lets face it, if you are reading this review you care about how your PC looks!
Another feature that sets aside the beantech from other solutions we have seen is its excellent removable motherboard tray. The BT-85 has a slide out panel just like Beantech’s aluminium cases, a design also favoured by Cooler Master and Lian-Li. The back panel is a source for the first real criticism of this case – and that is the design of the rear PCI plates, i.e. where your graphics card, modem and sound card plugs attach. Unlike other cases where you get an ‘L’ shaped gap to simply slide in your cards, the BT-85 just has a hole. For most PCI cards this is not an issue, as they do not have protruding ports. However, with most AGP graphics cards now having DVI, VGA and TV-out, things can get pretty crowded at the back, and I found installing video cards very difficult. As most of you will only install a new card once a year at the maximum this wont be a major problem, but if you are a reviewer like me and review 10 or more cards in a year, this becomes quite a major criticism.
