Look inside & Cooling

Opening the case is quite easy and tool-less, one thumbscrew at the back holds the top panel in place, which in turn secures the two side panels, so it takes on screw to get complete access to the internals of the Black Pearl!

This thumbscrew in turn is used to screw tight the power supply (one of the 4 mounting holes anyway); so there’s really a minimal usage of materials.

With the top and side panels removed we get a clear view of the different areas inside the Black Pearl; A small instructional manual and a set up screws and single PCI slot cover is found inside;



The motherboard sits at the bottom, as expected, with the other components build on the next level up.

The hard drive cage needs to be removed to allow installation of up to two 3.5” disks:



Motherboard installation is made easy as the motherboard tray can be slid out after removing a few screws at the back:



Cooling wise the Black Pearl has one single exhaust fan at the back, luckily it’s of a healthy size: 120x120x25mm


the 120mm fan is hooked up with a 4-pin connector no RPM read-out available

By default it’s mounted by four screws to the case, in order to reduce and noise you can easily swap them out for a better alternative: Acousti Ultra-Soft Fan Mounts



Let’s install some hardware inside to see if it all fits ->