Senfu Tech Station Review
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There are many varied reasons why someone would want to connect PC parts together and get them running without having them mounted in a PC case. Some people want to verify that a newly purchased part works before tearing apart their PC to install it. My reason is that I routinely swap out parts while doing equipment reviews. While cruising HighSpeed PC's website, I saw this item and thought, "that's a pretty smart idea there." The Senfu Tech Station seemed like it would fulfill my need nicely.
Senfu Tech Station
Intro
There are many varied reasons why someone would want to connect PC parts together and get them running without having them mounted in a PC case. Some people want to verify that a newly purchased part works before tearing apart their PC to install it. My reason is that I routinely swap out parts while doing equipment reviews. While cruising HighSpeed PC's website, I saw this item and thought, "that's a pretty smart idea there." The Senfu Tech Station seemed like it would fulfill my need nicely. Senfu is a Taiwan based manufacturer of cooling products for the computer. They create various water based cooling devices such as CPU coolers. Senfu also developed the Superbox, a storage box which fits a tower's drive bay.So, without missing a beat, I plopped down the old credit card and ordered one. A week later, it arrived at my door and I was ready to assemble my permanent test bench for reviewing products ,or so I thought. Today I will be reviewing the fit, finish and functionality of the Senfu Tech Station and whether it is worth my hard earned dollars.
Packaging and Specifications
The tech station comes in a relatively small box and requires complete assembly by the user. Most of the writing on the box is in Chinese but some of the information is in English. You really don't need to be able to read the writing on the box to figure out what this is for since the pictures do a good job of displaying this item's use.
(click to enlarge)
(*box wrench is not included in kit)
Items included with in the package are:
(4) 310mm metal tubes
(4) 160mm metal tubes
(4) 135mm metal tubes
(4) bottom corner connectors
(4) top/middle corner connectors
(2) 320mm x 150mm Plexiglas plates
(1) 330mm x 160mm foam cushion
(1) strip of (20) self-adhesive non-slip pads
(1) dust cover
(1) power switch
(1) reset switch
(1) HD LED
(1) Power LED
(1) Piezo PC Speaker
(1) instruction sheet in Chinese and English
Assembly
Assembly of the tech station can be performed with a box wrench, adjustable crescent wrench or pair of pliers depending on how badly you want to mar the surface of the chromed metal tubes. Although the included instruction sheet can be confusing, assembly is simple with a little patience, a little common sense and a lot of looking at the pictures of the package box.
Take the four bottom corner connectors and slide the 310mm and 135mm tubes onto them. It's easiest to place your hand or forearm across the longest tubes while using your wrench to turn the short tube a quarter turn either way. This turning motion will lock the tube onto the end connectors. Perform the same action on the other short tube then do the same to the long tubes.
It's best to apply the wrench close to the ends of the long tubes when turning because the metal is soft and will dent or crush if you apply too much pressure in the middle of the length of the tube. Look the picture above to see how easy it is to damage the tubes.
Once the lower shelf is assembled, you can apply one non-slip self-adhesive pad to each bottom corner of the end connectors. You repeat the assembly process for the upper shelf minus the non-slip pads. However this will be slightly more difficult as the upper shelf uses the end connectors with four endpoints. The four point connectors are slightly more awkward to work with in my opinion.
Once the upper and lower shelves are assembled, you can place the four vertical tubes on the posts of the lower shelf connectors and drop the upper shelf connectors into the tops of the vertical tubes and tighten accordingly. Remember to take care not to put too much pressure on the tubes. Just enough torque to lock them in place is all that's needed.
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