Exterior



Beginning at the front we see what at first appears to be a pretty standard mid-tower configuration. There are four externally accessible optical drive bays and two of them have faceplates that flip down when you hit the eject button. There is also one externally accessible floppy drive bay for those who still make use of this device, or who may be using something along the lines of a card reader.

Overall construction of this enclosure is a thin steel build that is not the sturdiest case that I have seen to date, but showed no signs of structural weakness. The front bezel is plastic and is designed to be aesthetically pleasing.



Toward the bottom you will find the power and reset buttons, along with the front I/O ports. Included here are two USB ports (2.0 of course) and your basic audio ports. Lacking is the option for an IEEE1394 port, but with fewer and fewer products making use of this interface that is understandable.

While just a personal preference of mine, I was glad to see somebody finally put the I/O ports on the left side of the case. Since that is the side panel that I usually remove to do work inside, I generally keep my enclosures sitting with the right side against a wall. Ports on the right are just not convenient, and many of the folks I have talked to also place their system enclosures in a similar manner.



Taking a closer look toward the bottom of the front panel shows us something that falls into that "innovative" category, a mirror backed area that has an LCD display indicating such things as up-time, temperature readings from the included thermal probe, hard drive activity, and fan speeds. It also allows you to control two fans from the front panel, which will save a few dollars for those who are looking to make use of a rheostat device anyway.



Moving to the side shows a non-windowed panel that includes both a fan and a ventilation port that sits adjacent to the graphics card area of most motherboards. While the fan is filtered, the extra ventilation port is not. This will cause you to have to clean the interior at times since there will be dust coming in from the non-filtered port. Removal of the side panel is done by two thumb screws.



Turning to the rear of the enclosure shows a pretty standard layout for an ATX system, but since there are industry standards to address, this does not come as a surprise. There is space for two 80mm exhaust fans on this back panel, but only one comes included as default with the product.

I was pleasantly surprised that this enclosure did not come with a factory plate for the motherboard rear ports. I have really been waiting for this item to go away in most case designs. After all, pretty much every motherboard sold has a different layout and they all come with their own cover plate, so getting rid of this extra piece of metal is probably long overdue.