A Look Inside

The 3D Storm packs quite a bit of tool-less features, as well as cooling potential. After removing the side panel which was held in place by two thumbscrews we have access to the interior. While this case follows the ATX standard with the power supply in the top near the rear, hard drives near the bottom/front and optical drives at the top front, there is something in the middle which doesn’t appear in the ATX guidelines. A metal bar which has mounting holes all over, and comes fitted with two 120mm fans. This is the “3D-core-fan” Sunbeamtech first showed off at Cebit 2006 and further improved this year.



The core-fan is installed with 3 screws, one on the side, 2 at the bottom, when removed you have access the switch the orientation of the two 120mm fans. Each fan is rated at 1000rpm, which is quite slow for this size fan, the upside is low noise!



The top fan on the metal bar can be installed to blow air towards the CPU/RAM area at different angles. The bottom fan can either blow air from front to back of the case, or from the side, downwards on the VGA and motherboard.



In order to install the 5.25” devices (and floppy drive if you still have one) you have to remove the front panel, pulling from the bottom in an arc upwards it comes loose easily. Each of the honey grate 5.25” panels is covered with dust filters on the inside:



Keeping construction costs lower, the 5.25” metal face plates need to be twisted loose, but there are screw mounting holes on the sides if you decide to place them back:



Onto the core of the 3D Storm, cooling ->