After some struggling with routing the cables we achieved a pretty clean build. I must say the red and black is the icing on the cake. Maximum GPU length is 330mm which is more than enough for most videocards. Nevertheless, better verify first as this case does not have a removable HDD cage to allow using longer cards.

The Corsair Hydro 100 was a bit tricky to install, but patience is a virtue. This cooler allows for great cooling and to obtain a very clean build. Routing the PSU cables was a breeze with the appropriate cutouts, even the top 8 pin CPU connector has got a nice spacious hole to route it through.

The HDD case is easy to use, just don't use too much force when sliding in the HDD's. The room to tuck away the cables is limited , even tough the sidepanel has it's extrusion. Easiest way to to tuck them away, is behind the cage of the hot swappable drives.

Temperature tests

For the temperature test we went with a single GTX480 Fermi GPU setup. The Idle results are measured after 15 mins of idling. The CPU Load test results are obtained after 30 mins of number crunching prime95, custom test 12 - 12K, set to run on 12 threads. The GPU load was measured and logged via AIDA64 and GPU-Z by running a tri loop of 3DMark Vantage. Maximum temp value for the GPU and average temp off all the cores is used in the chart as data.

Since we are using the same Corsair H100 cooler as with the Carbide 500R case we will compare them results with the above values. CPU temps under load are 6°C hotter. Same counts for the GPU, where there's a 5°C advantage for the Corsair again. But keep in mind that the Corsair Carbide 500R has got two 120mm front fans and a big 200mm sidepanel fan to cool down the installed hardware. But in defence of the Corsair case the Hornet sucked in fresh outside air to cool down the CPU. While the Corsair had to work with the case's ambient air. If we want to play fair we could have installed two extra sidepanel fans and retest. But we rather use what's in the box and not what could have been in the box. So not that bad temperature results as the air flow of the front fan is seriously obstructed. I wonder what it would be like with a major overhaul of the front.

Noise wise this is a very silent case, the two used fans are barely audible. In fact it is the noise generated by the Corsair H100 that has the upper hand. A big step forward from the noisy Enermax Vegas fan !