Installation and Case Cooling
For the installation portion of this review, I chose to install a basic AMD micro ATX-based system. The parts don’t really matter anyways because what we are really evaluating is how easy it is to install parts versus testing the actual hardware themselves. The first step in this particular installation process is to secure the top handle using four screws to the top of the case.
Next, I installed the motherboard standoffs. First, I screwed them in as much as I could and then used a nut driver to tighten all seven of them down.
We installed our XFX micro ATX motherboard and secured it with seven screws. We also made sure the backplate lined up properly, which it did so we moved on to the next step in the installation process.
We installed the power supply using four included screws. This is another mindless step, but I had to include it anyways.
Here’s a quick pic of me installing the DVD burner into the Vulcan. No explanation necessary here I hope.
We secured the DVD burner to the chassis using four included thumbscrews. These thumbscrews were the best quality, but they still performed well during this installation.
Next, we installed the two hard drive rails and ensured they had a tight fit before putting them into the Vulcan’s lower hard drive cage.
Here’s a quick pick of me locking the hard drive into the lower hard drive cage. Exciting!
Now we moved onto connecting our two included fans to the fan controller. We plugged in these two wires so users could independently control the LEDs on their fans.
After doing a little cable management and adding a GTS 250, we were able to complete the entire installation process in less than 20 minutes. That’s a great time as most of my installations take around 30 minutes to complete. As you can see from the photo, there is plenty of room for longer video cards, more hard drives in the lower HD cage, and more air cooling expandability options that are not being utilized.
Here’s a quick pic of the final product with the side panel installed. I love that you can actually see through the mesh and see how the system is configured. Overall, this was a great build with very minor issues during installation. The motherboard standoffs are a bit shorter than typical PC cases so that made tightening them a little more difficult. I also didn’t like the plastic thumbscrews because they felt cheap and that they might possibly break if I try to tighten them down too hard. I would have also liked a tool-less railing system for the optical drives.
