Test Setup

To tax the cooling efficiency we decided to put a Pentium 2.4Ghz inside, 2 of them!

TerAngreal’s P4 Xeon Test Setup
CPU	2x Intel P4 Xeon 2.4Ghz (stock cooling)
Mainboard	Asus PC-DL Deluxe Intel 875P
Memory	2*512Mb TwinMOS PC3200
Other	Geforce 6600GT Western Digital 200Gb & Seagate 160Gb DVD-Rom & DVDRW Terratec Aureon PCI soundcard Antec TrueBlue 480W PSU

Installation

The optical and HDD drive bays are screwed into the frame; it takes 6 screws in total to free them all, after which you can proceed to install the devices into the bays. Without the drive bays there is plenty of room to install the power supply, motherboard (+CPU’s) and the memory modules.

Now it’s time to replace the drive bays with care as they tend to hover over some parts of the motherboard, large/high ram modules (the ones with LEDs) will cause problems when you’re using the bottom 5.25” optical drive bay. Furthermore if you have a large (long) video card it’s best to not install any drives in the middle HDD bay as this can cause a possible incompatibility. Our 6600GT turns out to be one of the shorter video cards on the market, although it’s still a tight fit. Here’s a small list of common graphics cards and their lengths:

6600GT Length 180mm

X800GT Length 190mm

X850XT Length 190mm

7800GT Length 200mm

7800GTX Length 205mm

6800Ultra Length 215mm

6800GT Length 220m




So what have we learned so far from the installation?

The middle drive bay, when used for HDD mounting, can cause problems with long video cards.

The lower 5.25” optical drive bay when used can cause problems with high memory modules (LEDs,…).

Using one of the HDD drive bays for storing the excessive power supply cables is almost a necessity rather than an option, choosing a PSU with short(er) cables will come in handy.

So are we saying the LC17 is bad? Of course not! Building a case which is able to fit 6 hard drives, 2 optical drives and a complete ATX system will never be easy and there will always be complications here or there due to the wide variety of computer hardware available. This makes it almost impossible to design such a compact desktop enclosure without possible compatibility issues.

So once we’ve got everything neatly tucked inside it’s time to finish the job off, with some nice looking bezels for the optical drives; they are attached by using double sided tape, so you better make sure everything is lined up correctly.



Flashy blue LED aluminates when the power is turned on, however it might be a bit too bright for some.



Time to for thermal testing ->