Vibox Defcon 3 Red Gaming PC Review

A Closer Look

The Defcon 3 features an incredibly clean design with good cable management. Here we can see, the closed-loop cooler and tubing run which connects to the pump in an aesthetically pleasing way. Although, I’m not keen on the motherboard’s brown tinge which is pretty ghastly and quite dated from a visual standpoint. On the other hand, once the system is powered on, the red LED strips and fans mask this surprisingly well.

From this image, it’s clear that the non-modular power supply increases the difficulty when trying to achieve clean cable runs. Despite this, given the power supply’s limitations, the cabling job is of a high quality and every inch of the chassis has been used effectively. On another note, the LED strip wire is hidden well, and unlike some systems, it was attached with a very strong adhesive.

The graphics card doesn’t exhibit any noticeable droop and only requires a single 6-pin PCI-E connection. This reduces the system’s power draw and allows for a cleaner finish. If I was to be overly picky, the GPU’s protruding fan cable might be annoying to some, but it’s easily re-positioned behind the cooler’s shroud. Please note, this is how the graphics card is by design and not a criticism of Vibox’s attention-to-detail.

The MSI Gaming GTX 950 is stunning and incorporates a subtle white LED. While it’s not the most powerful card on the market, it doesn’t look cheap and fits with the system’s red theme rather nicely.

Vibox mounted the Thermaltake Water 3.0 cooler perfectly and didn’t position the lettering at a disjointed angle. Also, the pump’s cable is routed to the header via a tight cable run which makes it almost impossible to see with the naked eye.

From this angle, we can see the hard drive placement and use of a drive mount to hold a power supply cable in its optimal position.

As previously mentioned, it can be a difficult task to perform clean cable management using non-modular power supplies. In this particular case, Vibox employed sensible cable runs, tight zip-ties and a logical arrangement to make the side panel easy to close and produce a stellar finish.

The SATA cables and Molex for the LED strip are tightly packed together behind the hard drive cage. There’s more than enough room to upgrade the storage in the near future, and Vibox has given the end-user a good framework to install another 2.5″ or 3.5″ drive.

The chassis’ indent to store power supply connectors has been used without trying to cram too many cables into this section. Therefore, the side panel can close without any undue force, and it’s simple enough to find the right cable in the event of a hardware malfunction which could be down to a loose connection.