Interior
The interior is finished in black, with a few red clips on the optical drive bays. There is a small CPU cooler mounting cut-out at the back, although I can’t help think that it looks a little too small and could have been cut a little wider.
There’s plenty of ventilation in the base, great if you have a longer than usual PSU and you can also install a 120/140mm on the right, near the hard drive bays.
Cable routing is plentiful, with lots of high quality rubber grommets littered around the motherboard.
The three 5.25″ drive bays each come with a quick release mechanism, but there is also an optional 3.5″ hard drive bay fitted in the bottom cage.
Semi-modular hard drive bays offer up room for eight 3.5″ or 2.5″ hard drives in this configuration. The left wall of the top five bays can be unscrewed and moved closer to the front. Combined with the 5 x 2.5″ drive trays in the box you can convert these into 2.5″ only bays and free up extra space within the chassis. Unfortunately you cannot remove the hard drive bays completely.
Here you can see the hard drive bay trays, which are only plastic, but are tool free for 3.5″ drives.
In the back there is a single 140mm fan installed. It comes with a 3 pin connection and a pre-installed molex adaptor to ensure maximum compatibility.
The expansion slots are all fitted with reusable ventilated covers and quick release thumb screws for easy access.
Here you can see the top 120/140mm fan mounts, although I can’t help but think that there is a lot of wasted space here, with no room anywhere for a 240mm radiator despite the cases large size.
Around the back I found the cable management space to be quite limited, with 15mm being about average for the bulk of it, but there are a lot of cable routing holes and plentiful cable tie loops, so it should be relatively easy to achieve a good look.
The front panel covers flip down, of which I’ve just pulled one forward to demonstrate.
The side panel door is made from two section’s, with the chassis exterior being bolted on to the inner main frame. This allows the fan mounting holes to be hidden behind the exterior grill, but may also have something to do with XFX offering a different choice of exterior panels with their Alpha (aluminium) model.
Hoo boy that case looks like a dreadful mess to me, not my taste at all. I’ve seen overpriced, impractical cases (ThermalTake Level 10) often enough but at least some were sexy (In Win 901/904). Generally I like XFX products (especially their Seasonic built PSU’s) and I hope their next attempt is a much better looking, far more practical and far, far better value for money attempt. Until now XFX products have always been reasonable value for money and I hope it remains so.
P.S. I’ll have to test this case myself soon so I’d better keep an open mind.
I agree but I don’t. I think that if any established manufacturer was to do this, I’d agree with you, but this is still a first attempt for XFX so credit where credit is due. Yes the stylish is a bit 80’s in terms of the slats, but the idea is there. I’m keen to see if they take our comments on board and develop something with more design flair.
It probably looks nicer in the… ahem, plastic than it does in pics. It’s the price and practicality in the review that really caught my attention. At this point in time I’m not sure I’ll ever get to see it let alone test it.
WANT