Build Process
The motherboard tray has adequate room above, an abundance of room to the right, but nothing below the board if you're building with standard ATX.
As you can see, with an ATX board in place there is no room below for wider components on a bottom expansion slot, but moreover there are no openings down here to rout unsightly cables below the board. The ugly case I/O mess from power switch, USB, and HD audio will be in plain sight because of the shroud, which inexplicably has no hole on top to route these cables.
With the motherboard in place it was time to look at CPU cooling options.
How does a standard 240mm AiO cooler like Corsair’s H100i GTX fit up here? It's almost like Corsair knew the dimensions of such a cooler, as it fit perfectly.
The heatsinks around the CPU and my RAM came fairly close to the rad, but there was no actual clearance issue. Push/pull fans will not work up top, but my dual-fan H75 cooler fit just fine on the rear 120 mm fan mount.
For larger coolers the front is the answer, and just holding the H100i GTX up against the stock intake fans demonstrated this:
This cooler looks pretty small up here, and there is a ton of room around it. The thickest coolers pose no challenge to the front of the 570X, though switching out the included fans takes away some style points (if you care about RGB).
Moving on to storage, 3.5 inch hard drive support is limited to two drives, with a pair of tool-free trays stacked along the left side.
These trays are rather thick, and given the unusual inverted position of the installed drive there is additional space behind them – presumably for ventilation (or additional cable routing space).
The SSD slots are also tool-free, positioned just under the motherboard CPU cutout. We've seen this type of tray from corsair before, and the drives simply slide up and lock into place, and can be removed by releasing the catch at the bottom of the slot.
Four total drives might be inadequate for some builds, but there's a storage trade off from any design that favors huge open component chambers – while relegating storage to the back side.
The power supply merits more than a quick mention here, as it will require some care to prevent the cable mess from showing from the front side, given the smallish shroud above it, which is open on the side. I bound the extra cables to keep the mess to a minimum, but other Corsair designs have included a removable section to give users a choice between a full shroud, or the increased front cooling space.
Speaking of cable routing, there is an unusual metal cover back here to help streamline the build, which attaches with a pair of thumbscrews.
If extra care is taken with cable routing, even thicker power supply cables can be hidden inside this cover. A nice touch when the back of the case is glass!
Before checking out the completed build and performance numbers, as usual I'll cover the test components and enclosure benchmarking methods on the next page. (Or you can skip to the last page.)
Case looks nice, blah blah
Case looks nice, blah blah blah blah, but two gripes which are not aimed at this case specifically, but in cases in general:
1. lack of support for an optical drive.
2. PSU filter that comes out hte side instead of the back.
I get it, this case has that glass panel, so an optical drive is impractical, but what if the panel swung on a pivot so you could open that optical drive? Or if the glass panel had the option to be shorter to accomodate an optical drive?
Also, I probably have one of the very few cases that has the psu filter that slides out the side – the Antec 1100
Optical drives are clearly
Optical drives are clearly considered on the way out. I have one in my computer, can’t remember the last time I used it.
+1
I don’t know when I used
+1
I don’t know when I used my last either…
My current build is based on
My current build is based on NZXT440, no optical drive. I was concerned that it would be a hindrance, bit in the last six months, I haven’t had the need to use an optical drive. Long live broadband!
I know it is for airflow, but
I know it is for airflow, but the grill area on top of the pcie slots and the grill like slot covers really make the back of the case look ugly to me when looking through the side panel.
This is the first PC case
This is the first PC case I’ve seen in a while that visually impressed me. Would be a great case for someone who wants to show off a high end build (wherever people actually do that). Those noise levels are pretty high though.
PSU shroud is too short, has
PSU shroud is too short, has no holes in it for wires and there is no fans speed controller like I have on my Corsair 600. It is nice to have the RGB controller on the top IO, animation speed, color and mode are available. However fan speed and illumination brightness have been ignored. These are not PWM fans!
Just saying.
Hey Sebastian,
How about the
Hey Sebastian,
How about the Raijintek Paean Dual-Compartment Chassis with Tempered Glass next? It is glass and aluminium and is relatively inexpensive, and from the pics it looks awesome. They mention both test bench applications and aluminium, so it is really up my alley.
Thanks
I didn’t think Raijintek was
I didn't think Raijintek was distributed in the U.S., but I see they are sold by Newegg. I'll see if they are interested in sending out any samples.
Awesome. Thanks so much for
Awesome. Thanks so much for trying.
A great case that I cannot
A great case that I cannot use. I live in a motorhome and travel much of the time. Glass is a no-no!