Front Fascia, PSU Bracket, and Install
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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Here is where you get a better look of what is behind the front fascia. Once I remove the top half of the front fascia, you can see the external 3½” drive bay that is thumb screwed in place and easily removable. You can also notice the two hold downs for the bottom half of the front fascia just below these thumbscrews. Once the bottom half is removed you can see the wiring for the front panel. Nothing special here, just your standard power and HDD LEDs (none of them are blue, boohoo), along with power and reset switches for wiring needs. One other thing to note is the front fan guards. I still don’t understand why manufacturers insist putting such air restricting guards in front of the fans, if they are 99.9% of the time stuck behind the front fascia. To date, I have only seen one manufacturer listen to this issue and they had it done long before I ever saw my first Lian-Li case. I wish others would follow suit.
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Here you can easily see the 3½” drive bay removal and how easy it is to install any external 3½” drives. The default floppy goes behind the front fascia and is not seen, so even a beige colored floppy will matter very little during this install. You can also get a better picture of the front fascia wiring for the LEDs and switches. The reset switch is actually placed in between the front panel LEDs.
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Installation of the power supply (PSU) is quite easy. Just as with any other case, 4 screws and it is in. It does allow for proper installation for dual fanned PSUs, as some cases force you to install the PSU upside down. Not with this case. The one drawback is the PSU bracket. I think a better bracket is needed as you can see in these pictures, that the bottom PSU fan is partially blocked.
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The installation of this system was very easy. The removable drive bays for the floppy and hard drives eased that part of the process. The motherboard slid into place with ease, even with the support bar across the middle of the case. The support bar was never an issue in this install although it would be even better if this case had a motherboard tray. Using an Asus A7A266 board, which is rather large in dimensions, it was still easy. The slide rails for the CDR were an easy screw onto the CDRW drive and push it into place until it locked down. One of the extra costs associated with this case is case fans. There are none provided, but I used 3 Panaflo L1A fans I had laying around and it seems to do a very good job while keeping things quiet. You can see everything installed and still have a good line for airflow, front to back, not to mention how well the silver face plate for my Ricoh CDRW matches with this case :).
