After all of that, we will move on to installing the other components.

There is a plastic block above the power supply to keep it from moving around.

The power supply was surprisingly difficult to install. It had to be forced up in there, but once it was in place and screwed down, it was very stable.

All I had to do then was pop in the RAM and video card.


Installing the optical drive was pain free. The tabs on the drive rails fit into the screw holes, so no tools are required.

All you have to do then is pop the front panel off, and slide the drive in.


You then remove one of the drive blanks, and pop the panel back into position. Since we aren't using a floppy drive, the open bay looks strange. I would prefer that it just have a standard 3.5" bay opening with a blank face.


On the lower half of the front, there is an adjustable panel. Theoretically, you can open and shut this to increase or decrease airflow. While this may sound alright in theory, in reality it doesn't do much of anything. Since it does not fully shut, or open much wider than when it is closed, its more or less a novelty.

While the case does not come with a fan on the front, there is a space to put a 120mm fan and the vents are actually covered by a washable filter.

Since I have 4 SATA drives up front, that region tends to get very, very warm. So warm in fact, that I was not able to touch the drives with my bare hands without feeling pain. Knowing that this could not possibly be good for the drives, I took the stock 120mm fan from the rear of the case, and moved it too the front.



As you can see, the fan housing from the back and front are identical. I was able to switch the fan without even taking it out of the blue housing. I just snapped it off the rear, snapped out the empty front bracket, and switched them. With the fan in the front rather than in the rear, the drives went from being red hot to almost room temperature. The difference was like night and day.