Moving to the interior of the box, we'll start off with the optical drive bay area. This is a pretty standard layout for systems using a rail system for drive mounting. Toward the top of the photo you can see the bottom of the tray that contains the power switch. Remember, if you don't like where it is located, just move it.
Speaking of that tray, this gives a closer look at it. It serves as a multi-function carrier since it is compatible with either a 3.5" floppy drive or a hard drive. Rails are already mounted to the side of the tray, so you simply install either of the supported devices and your set. From there it slides easily into place. We’ll cover installation in a bit, but is really is a simple install.
Moving down the front column brings us to the hard drive tray. The assembly sits in a sideways position and has a steady flow of air coming from the front mounted 120mm fan. This ensures that newer (and faster) hard drives will stay cool.
The drive bay comes out by removing the screw located at the top right hand corner. Remove the screw and the entire tray comes out of the case for easy installation of your hard drives. You can also see a large circular design cut into the back of the tray. This is for those who are looking for a more direct cooling solution for their hard drives as it is designed to fit a 120mm fan. Word to the wise... Don't install a 120mm fan in the drive tower if you are using the 120mm fan in the front of the enclosure. If you do this, you will have airflow entering the same space from two different directions and the turbulence will most likely cause a very ineffective overall cooling solution.
Taking a closer look at the hard drive bay shows a very nice addition. These small black chunks you see are rubber grommets. Their purpose is to stop the vibration caused by having a rapidly spinning drive mounted directly into a metal enclosure. This helps reduce noise levels during times of hard drive activity and is always a welcome addition to any case design.
Tool-free installation of PCI/AGP/PCI-E devices has long been a goal of many case manufacturers. While this isn't the first style we've seen, is appears to be better than many I've seen. It takes just a simple movement of the retention bracket shown above to hold your peripheral device firmly in place.
If you take a closer look you will see that the plastic tip sits very close to the rear edge of the enclosure. Without anything to stick out over the lip, you will have no problems with tall peripherals. The notch on the right edge of the retention clip is in a location that coincides with the PCB attached to the peripheral bracket, which is why larger (taller) cards are easily accommodated.
One note of caution; if you have a video board or other peripheral that requires two PCI slots, you may have to remove one of the retention clips. The reason for this is that many of these dual-slot devices do not have a edge that is compatible with the retention clip of the enclosure. If you lock the clip down until it snaps into place, you will break the clip’s bottom edge.
To finish up our tour of the interior, I wanted to point out the strange location of the speaker. Most cases made, if they decide to add a speaker that is, mount it to the bottom of the enclosure. In this case, however, the speaker is mounted beside the rear fan. This places it just under the power supply. Not a big deal, but different so I thought it worth mentioning.
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