Build Out:

Once I got the thing fully assembled for picture taking, I began disassembling for build out. The bay filler plates came out, the top came off, and the two HDD (hard disk drive) racks were pulled out - the included long screwdriver is used for the HDD racks.

The first devices to install are the ones in the optical and floppy bays. In my system, I had a DVD burner, my Aerogate 3 fan controller/temperature monitor and my Adaptec/YE Data combo floppy drive/Flash card reader. Even though I knew I couldn't put any drives in there with the HDD racks in place, I forgot and put the HDD racks back in before the Aerogate, so the next step was to remove the HDD racks again which, of course, are the most tricky to work with.

I found that leaving the front HDD rack screws in place but loosened hastens things considerably. You just slide the rack in under the front screws and only the rear ones are left to add. I also decided that the HDDs should be mounted to the rear as far as possible. Install your HDDs (I wouldn't install more than four (two in each rack) w/o modding in some larger fans) while the racks are loose as, once again, there is no way to do it when the racks are in place.



Here is a front view with the system running in a normally lit room.

Be aware that many of the screws provided for mounting things are excessively long, especially the PSU (power supply unit) screws. Since I knew I was only going to install two HDDs, I used a few of the 32 supplied HDD screws for PSU duty instead. Those are still too long, so I put some washers under the heads with the added benefits of preventing scuffing the plastic around the screw holes and spreading the load. There shouldn't be anything inside the PSU to contact even the longest screws supplied, but being sure or using shorter ones is recommended. The HDD and optical drive screws are too long as well, so check carefully inside your drives for clearance or shim them out with washers or spacers. I found two shorter screws in my kit for the burner and left two of the supplied screws loose.

Since we're talking screws, no self-threading screws for plastic framed devices were provided, and many that come with the devices aren't anywhere near long enough for the thick acrylic of this chassis.


Here it is in a dimmed room.

Beyond that, everything went together well and the devices are secured well into place. Once you have your HDDs in place in the racks, I suggest loosening the rack assembly screws a bit to relieve any stresses, and then retighten. The same with the optical drive rack if you plan to tighten your devices up snugly. The center rack on mine was a bit wider than it should be and a gap was left to one side of my burner.

Be careful not to warp the chassis of your burners by tightening too tightly (that's the same regardless of the material your case is made of - warped burner chassis = BAD!). If the same gap is evident in yours, either use something as a shim to fill the gap or leave the screws loose.


And here the Sunbeamtech is lighting up a darkened room - the 3D Flower screen saver was running so the monitor wouldn't totally wash out the scene.

Test Setup Details

Test Setup
CPU	Athlon 64 ADA4000DHBOX Cooler Master Hyper TX2 CPU cooler
Mainboard	ASRock ALive NF6G-VSTA/M/ASR mATX motherboard and I used the integrated video.
Memory	2GB of Corsair XMS DDR2 RAM
Other	Antec EA-380 PSU - the "SF" version that comes with the new compact cases and has short cables - a PSU that is up to two inches or so longer than normal would fit. Hitachi 7k80 80GB hard drive. Samsung DL DVD burner - short chassis burners like this are recommended. I also mounted an old IBM 10k U160 SCSI drive as an added noise and heat source for my stress tests.

Basically a cool-running system core