Look inside & Cooling

Removing the side panels is a painless process thanks to the thumbscrews and the handle at the back of the side panel. Sliding them back into place is a whole other story; they used a plastic mold on the outside of the aluminium panels which has to fit “just right” or it won’t work. If you plan to occasionally access the insides of your case, this will become quite a burden,



The side panel houses a blue 120mm LED Fan with 4-pin connector, on the outside is a metal grill to help reduce dust getting inside the case, but the grill holes are quite big, so there will be a dust build-up inside over time if you connect this fan. The fans inside the case marked DF1202512SELI are running at ~1250rpm according to our Tachometer.



The inside of the case is quite standard fair, room for ATX PSU at the top, HDD bays front bottom, 5x5.25” bays available; one 120mm intake in the front, one 120mm outtake at the rear. Neither of these features LEDs, which is a shame since the side panel has a window and having more lightening inside would definitely help.



The other side of the case has nothing special, the motherboard tray is not removable, there is not really room for advanced cable routing.



The goodies bag consists of a basic installation manual and screws to fit all your hardware. Which brings us to:

Installation

The thumbscews on the side panels where the only tool-less features, for all other installation steps you’ll need a screwdriver. The expansion slot covers are made from flimsy aluminium and held into place with screws:



The length of the case didn’t prevent this from happening when we tried to install a HDD in the middle bay in combination with a long video card:



So you won’t be able to fit a lot of hard drives in here if you plan to use one (or two!) long video cards:



All the other gear is screwed into place, we did not encounter any fitting issues, but did run into some sharp edges in some remote locations, while we didn’t bleed to death it was not a pleasant experience.

Test setup details next ->