Installation
Ok so what are we putting inside this case? Our system is comprised of an Intel Core i7-965 processor, ASUS P6T motherboard, 24GB DDR3 memory, ATI Radeon 4870 X2 video card, 2 128GB solid state drives, 2 750GB SATA drives, optical drive and we actually have one of Antec’s CP-Series power supplies. Stay tuned for a review of that very soon! The first thing you want to do is install your motherboard, the standoffs are already preinstalled so just screw it in.
Next we have our hard drives, I decided I wanted to put the 2 SATA drives in the top drive cage so I took the bays out, screwed the drives in and slid the drives back in.
We had a custom bracket made for our 2.5-inch solid state drives. It is the same size as a normal 3.5-inch drive so it fits easily into the bottom hard drive cage.
Moving on to the optical drive you need to install rails on each side then just slide it into the front of the case.
Next we have our power supply, as I said we had a CP-Series power supply from Antec, it’s the CP-850. To install a CP-Series power supply you first need to remove the bracket on the back of the case. Once it’s uninstalled you can slide the power supply in.
Now this is where I ran into some trouble. Before I installed the video card I went to connect everything up on the motherboard. After I had everything connected I went to put my video card in and I noticed that it did not fit. The top hard drives were blocking it! Luckily I had room in the bottom hard drive cage, but if you have more than 4 hard drives you could be out of luck if you want to run a large video card in your system. I solved the problem by moving the hard drives down to the bottom cage.
Once you have everything installed you can connect it all and try and organize your cables. There really is not a whole lot of room to make the case look clean, but I think I did a pretty good job.
Another thing that this case was missing was an opening behind the motherboard so you don’t have to remove your motherboard when installing certain CPU coolers. There are a few routing holes that you can use to route cables behind the motherboard. These really came in handy when routing the top power connector on the motherboard.
