Internal Case Overview:
Now lets consider the internal features on the front of the
Antec Nine Hundred Series Gaming Case.
As stated, this Antec case provides you with up to nine drive-bays in a mid-tower sized case. In the image below you will notice one of the two hard drive cages partially installed. Each of these cages holds three hard disks, for a total of six hard drive bays. The top three bays are dedicated to larger 5.25" optical drives. Each drive cage is secured by eight thumbscrews, four on each side of the case, for a total of eight fasteners. It is nice that the cages pull out from the front of the case, however fastening eight thumbscrews every time you want to install a drive is annoying. Also, keep in mind that both sides of the case need to be removed to get at the drive bay cage, so you really need to remove at least twelve thumbscrews just to pull the drive cage out (and that doesn't include the actual four fasteners that hold the hard disk inside of the cage).
Another small issue that bothered me about the front of this case was that I had to constantly fix the alignment of the top three CD-ROM slot covers pictured below. Each cover is held in place with a single screw on each side of the respective cover. Unfortunately this only fastens the cover in one axis, allowing the cover to rotate as the second picture (to the right) demonstrates. Now, this isn't a huge issue but it was still annoying. Antec seems to be adding more screws to this case then it does away with and to be honest its a step in the wrong direction. These days tool-less installations should be the norm, not the exception.
Next we will look at the "working" side of the case. As with any case, it looks large without any components installed. The most notable feature here is the black plastic mounting piece for another optional 120mm TriCool fan to help cool your processor or video card. Because the case already appears to have adequate airflow I opted to remove this fan mounting hardware.
The remainder of the pictures below were included so you would notice the excess of cables hanging throughout the case. Each of the supplied TriCool fans has its own speed controller which contributes to some of this additional cable clutter.
