The Inside and TruePower430
This content was originally featured on Amdmb.com and has been converted to PC Perspective’s website. Some color changes and flaws may appear.
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Once inside the case you can see just how much room there is inside. The drive rails come attached to the bottom of the case along with a box of all the other goodies like motherboard standoffs and screws galore. You can also see the lavender holders fro the front fans. There is one below the hard drive cage and one inside the hard drive cage. Great for cooling those 7200rpm drives. Or even better, some SCSI drives that heat up quite high will be well cooled by the hard drive fan. One thing to note however, you will need to remove to screws to release the side panel. It does have a locking release handle but you must remove two screws first to get inside the case.
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The front drive cages are the easiest I have seen. No screws or thumbscrews. A unique latching mechanism, with one easy pull of the latch, and the drive cages release. Put the drive cages back in and push the latch forward and they are locked in place. I have yet to see anything easier than this.
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These pictures show the front case wiring. There are plenty of wires to go around with so many features on the front of this case. Remember we not only have 4 LEDs to wire out but also two USB ports and a FireWire IEEE1394 port as well. Then of course there is the standard power and reset switches and speaker. The wiring is good and mostly easy to understand. The only thing that didn’t quite make sense was the reset LED. The 4 LEDs listed on the front of the case are Power, HDD and the last two simply marked as I and II. The LED marked with the HDD symbol on the outside of the case, is marked by the words reset LED on the wiring. Not sure why that is, but I think a better explanation of the wiring is in order, or at least have it make sense.
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The picture above on the left shows the rear fans and their lavender holders. No screws are used to hold in any fans in the case except for the side blowhole. Without major modification, there is no easy way to remove the fan holders and just use screws if you are so inclined to try. The other picture was taken through the hole where the power supply would be. I removed it to take this picture so you could see just how much room you have. Note that all 4 external drive bays are higher in the case than the top edge of the motherboard. No interference to be found here.
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This is where I discuss the power supply. This is a far change from the older Antec power supplies. Several changes have been made in this new TruePower series of power supplies. One is the addition of a second fan to the power supply. This will help cool not only the case, but the power supply itself which can generate heat. This power supply also employs Antec’s new Low-Noise Technology and it works! Something else to note is the power rating. Most have used in the past the 3.3v+5V rating as a guideline for purchasing a power supply. Well things are changing and this new power supply is now including the 12V line in its rating. This is just something to think about and investigate when comparing power supplies.
The other unique new feature of these power supplies is the addition of fan only connectors. The small instruction manual clearly states that this new power line that has two 4-pin molex connectors should not power more than 3 fans. I’m not sure why that is and I am still waiting to get some answers, so perhaps a more in-depth review of this power supply will be forthcoming in the future.
