Interior
Here is a picture with the left hand side removed, it is a fairly usual sight. There are however a few things to note, one being the angling of the 3.5″ bays compared to the 5.25″ and the inclusion of 2 specific 3.5″ bays with front access. The other point is that the 5.25″ bays all have a ‘quick release’ or ‘tools free’ system which you will see are in other areas of the case as well, this is certainly something that would make me buy a case over another similar case and I would probably pay more for these little extras as it really can save you a lot of effort – and a few layers of skin!
Further to what I said about one of the features on the front of the box, we can see that there is quite a large whole to give you access to the motherboard backplate so should allow you to change the CPU cooler without removing the motherboard.
Moving towards the front of the case we first take a look at the 5.25″ drive bays there are 4 slots which is pretty much standard. As you can see they have a metal cover at the front which can be removed and in the case of the top one has already been removed as they expect you to install at least 1 optical drive.
From the outside of these bays you can see the tool-free and easy to remove clips which secure your drive in place really easily. They consist of two pins either side and a rotating arm in the middle which locks each side in place. This allows you to remove drives effortlessly and without any screws to remove it is a real talking point.
Moving down slightly, we come to the 2*3.5″ bays which are mounted the same way round as the 5.25″ bays, these are classed as 1*external (can be accessed from the front of the case) and 1*internal (which, well, can’t). For some reason the bottom one does not have a tool-free locking mechanism.
Finally we come to the ‘normal’ 3.5″ bays, which is of course your normal desktop hard drive size, there are 5 more of these – although these are slightly wider than the other 3.5″ bays to allow for the hard drive mounting rails. You may well notice that these are perpendicular to the other 3.5″ and 5.25″ bays, which allows you to easily remove the hard drives. This will also aid in cable tidying as the cables will be able to run down just one side of the case and not across the middle as such. I do quite like the idea of the side-ways mounted 3.5″ bays (of course the 5.25″ bays and 2.5″ bays need to be facing the front of the case to give you access to them!). The mounting rails literally pin into the outside of your hard drive and then slide in and click in place. Simples!
We didn’t want to bore you with too many more pictures of the inside as most of it can be seen from the initial first few shots but the 140mm fan on the top of the case is out of sight. You can see it has screw spacing for both 140mm and 120mm.
Finally we take a look at the back of the inside case, as you will have seen from the exterior shots, there are 7 PCI slots and a 120mm fan. The slot to the right of the fan is for the motherboard I/O slots, and behind the fan cables are the two cable holes allowing access to the back I/O panels for USB 3.0 internal devices. The slot at the bottom is of course for the PSU.
Moving to the front of the case, and taking the front panel off we can see the 120mm fan at the front which pumps air straight into the side of the 3.5″ hard drive bays.
From the other side of the case we can see the remainder of the tool-free devices. As well as the motherboard backplate hole. There are also several places in which it should be possible to route cables through using the holes provided or you can go to the side of the motherboard tray. The cables you can see are the standard front panel connectors, USB, Power Switch, Reset Switch etc, these have all been routed through the bottom hole.
Unfortunately, there is not much space between the back of the motherboard and the case side, this may give us problems later on once everything is installed.
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