Installation (continued):
While installing my single hard drive, I found there to be two options. The first option, the easy way, is that the Tempest has provided enough room to install a drive without the removal of the hard drive cages. The second option is to remove the hard drive cage. In order to remove the hard drive cage you will need to remove six screws, two of which reinforce the tool-less rail design (although once removed they are not really needed). The other four screws are to remove the 120mm intake fan. The ability to remove hard drive cages is a nice option, but I doubt your installation would require you to need the use of this feature. Below are two pictures of this process. The below left image shows all drives in place as well as the hard drive cage partially removed. The below right image shows one of the screws reinforcing the tool-less rail design.
While removing the 5.25" bay covers I came across my first real complaint. As per the instructions "Remove the 5.25" black mesh for the 5.25" bay, by pushing the clips aside from inside the panel". If you follow these instructions please and I do stress "PLEASE" apply the most delicate amount of pressure. If not you will end up with the result documented in the below left image. The clips referenced in the manual are plastic and very easily broken. What I find interesting is that only the top 3 and bottom 3 bays have plastic clip retainers while the middle 3 are held by 2 screws each. I'd prefer the use of screws based on the brittle nature of the plastic used. So now knowing of this issue I will not remove any 5.25" bays for dust cleaning. Instead I will simply remove the filters while leaving the covers installed. In future revisions I hope NZXT will fix this issue.
With the assembly finished, it was now time to light it up. The case's overall appearance is interesting to say the least. In a dark environment, blue light is present on both the front and left sides. Below I included a picture to the left where I was able to catch a shot of the green hard drive activity light in action. Also visible, the fan mounted to the window allows you to see all of your hardware in action. In the next image you can see NZXT has attached 2 blue rails of light and the use of mesh allows the intake fans to be seen. My son has since been in awe of the looks of the Tempest, while I have been amazed with the silence. The noise is audible, but far less then I expected given the number of fans.
