First Impressions
I was a little dismayed by the fact that the case did not come pre-assembled. The eagerness of putting your computer together would have to be held back by approximately an hour to assemble the case properly. Detailed instructions are provided, but you do have to be careful which way you set the pieces in as to not to get them backwards. This will set you back some times if you realize too late.
During the assembly of the case, I noticed that some of the pieces do not fit snugly together, and a little creative ingenuity had to be employed to get the case together.
Another thing that will cause this case to lose some points is the front mounted USB 2.0 doesn’t fit on the case. First off, the holes on the bottom panel of the case were drilled in the wrong position, and the hole in the front panel was made a little too high for the USB 2.0 plugs to be seated correctly.
Mounting of the drives must be done first as this case doesn’t offer that much room to work in. You’re able to mount 3 5¼ inch drives, a floppy drive and 2 hard drives. Theoretically you can add more hard drives in this case with the removal of the 5¼ drives.
One last thing that I didn’t particularly like on this case is the fact that the PSU has to be mounted right next to the motherboard and not on top of it. Whenever you’ll want to change out your motherboard, or make any sort of modification to the CPU, such as changing the heatsink or the chip, you’ll have to remove the PSU. It is a minor inconvenience, but an inconvenience nonetheless.
Blowhole locations on the case are strategically located on the top of the case, on the front panel and the side panel. This gives an all round flow of air through the casing, keeping all the components nice and cool.Once assembled and powered on, the case looks pretty awesome with fans provided by A.C Ryan and the Reactor power supply from Mutant Mods.
