Internal Inspection:

The top cover is held on by two screws, and once these are removed it can slide right off. The front face removal is tool-less, and simply requires a few plastic tabs to be popped away from the steel of the case. The images below show that even with the top and front removed, you can not see much inside.


The 5.25" drive bay also doubles as part of something best described as a processor isolation chamber. Air is drawn in through the vents in the top of the case, through the removable air filter mounted to the top of the drive bay by the processor's fan, and then it exhausted out of the vents found above the rear I/O panel. This cooling arrangement is another point that reminds me of a BTX setup, as the processor fan doubles as the case cooling fan.


The 5.25" drive bay is held in place by a screw in the front and two tabs at the back, and at this point I realize that not much is tool-less in the BK623. The image below shows that a standard optical drive can be used in the drive bay, but it already seems to me that any DVD or CD drive I have used is going to be long enough to at least partial obscure the removable air filter. The air filter itself is just held in by a very slight press fit, and relies on the drive bay and top cover to sandwich it in place.


Below the drive bay is the most interesting portion of the "processor isolation chamber", a white plastic baffle that pretty much seals the top side of the CPU cooler from the bottom side. The product page for the BK623 describes the design in great detail (and adds a few diagrams), and explains how/why Intel worked with In Win to develop this: "The innovative partition plate cooling technology or PPCT is the world’s first complete thermal solution co-designed by IN Win and Intel. By separating the CPU fan from the heatsink to reduce back draft, PPCT efficiently streamlines the airflow in a unilateral direction to provide exceptional thermal performance."


The round opening for the CPU cooler can be moved around a bit to allow for different motherboard setups, and the black rectangle has an opening with rubber flaps that provide a tight (not quite air tight) squeeze on your optical drive power and data cables.