Installation:
The following components were installed into the case, and will be the basis for the installation discussion, as well as the testing:
The below left image shows off an overview of the installation. The cable management could perhaps be improved, but the sideways mounted drive cage makes things a bit difficult to really make things look clean. But, since the case doesn't have a window I am not overly concerned.
Everything fit into the case, so all was good... Well, almost everything fit inside the case. In general I use two of the Cremax Icy Dock drive bays, but this case will only allow one with my motherboard. In the above right image you can see that the Icy Dock fits in the upper most 5.25" drive bay, but none of the lower ones will work. The picture shows that a capacitor is in the way in the next bay down, and in the two below that the Icy Dock hits the IDE connectors. Icy Docks are deeper than your typical optical drive, but this is the first case I have ever used that didn't allow both to be installed.
The images below shows that although things are bit tight between the CPU cooler, rear exhaust fan, and power supply, everything did fit together well.
The next two images show the lower portion of the case, and my rat's nest of wires. Being tidy is a bit tricky, not only due to the drive cage orientation, but also due to the thicker than usual cables running from the front panel USB, Firewire, and audio ports to the various locations on the motherboard. Maybe its because these cables are light colored that they stand out... Perhaps black would be better.
And for some action shots, we see the green LED fan used on the CPU cooler shining through the case's perforations in the below left image. The below right image shows off the blue power LED, and although not active, the HDD activity light uses a red LED.
As a final casualty report, we had two instances of bleeding during this review. The first was from the side panel 'blades' mentioned previously. The second came when I was trying to pop the steel plates out of the 5.25" bays in order to get my drives installed. One knuckle scraped across the edge of the next plate, and that was enough to get the blood flowing.
