Taking a look inside



Once you open the case there’s a purple tubing thing which catches the eye, this turns out to be a fanduct which location you can adjust so it’s aimed towards the CPU area, it can also take a 120mm fan for more/active airflow.



All CD/DVD-drives and other 5.25" devices can be inserted in the case without screws. The system used is also seen on Chieftec cases and many other brands. Two rails are attached on each side of the drive, after which they easily slide into the 5.25" bay. A real nice addition is that 2 rails are stacked inside a 5.25" front panel when not in use. This way you can't lose any unused rail and you don't need to keep them somewhere in a closet.



Next, let's have a look at the 3.5" bays. They are orientated in a not-so-traditional way: the back of the hard disk (with the connectors) points towards the side panel of the case. Sure, this is not unique, but it's still nice. Unfortunately, the hard disk gets pretty close to the side panel, forcing Sata cables to bend pretty bad. As we all know, bending S-ATA cables to hard is just not good. (for P-ATA drives there is no problem at all).

I also tried turning around the disk (with the connectors towards the inside) but this can also be done in 4/6 possible locations, and it does work better. So I wonder why they didn’t move the drive cage towards the side panel more, this would create more clearance and there would be no more “extreme cable bending” problems.



Another interesting feature of the 3.5" bays is the following. The drives are attached to the rail/holder with special rubber screws, eliminating vibrations from harddisks. I could clearly hear the difference between a drive installed with these rubbers and one without.

The PCI cardholder is a screwless device: with 1 pull at the handle, the holder looses grip, setting free it's prisoners. It looks very sturdy and able to handle a lot of manipulations.



A little surprising detail is the presence of an intrusion detector. Such a detector warns the motherboard when the case is opened. Upon next reboot, the user will receive a message during boot, informing him that the case was opened. Unfortunately, my motherboard does not support this feature, so I was not able to test it.



Furthermore, we have a removable motherboard tray, which is easy to put back and lock when the motherboard is installed. It is fixed with two thumbscrews.



On the bottom of the case we find cables for the front in/output panel (USB/Firewire/Audio).
And last but not least: the 120mm outtake fan. It's a Cho-Liang 12V Brushless fan, performing its work with a reasonable airflow combined with a very low noise production.



Onto some performance tests and conclusion ->