Installation
Getting your system installed in the Core X1 is quite easy as you have much more room inside than your typical mini-ITX case. The first thing I will be installing is my mini-ITX motherboard. The Core X1’s motherboard tray is removable, which makes motherboard installation extremely easy, especially if you happen to have a large CPU cooler.
Once you have your motherboard installed on the tray simply install it back into the case.
Optical drive installation is next. You can pop off the front of the case to remove the drive bay covers. Then just put the front bezel back on and slide in your drive. Upon sliding my drive back in I realized that my optical drive did not line up correctly with the front of the case.
I thought it could have been the tool-less locking system messing something up so I removed it and sure enough the drive was lined up perfectly with the mounting holes. I tried another optical drive with the same result. Both of my drives were ASUS drives, I found it really odd that the drives did not line up correctly.
Hard drives are next, simply take out the trays to install them. I am using both a 3.5-inch hard drive and a 2.5-inch drive. The 3.5-inch drive installs tool-lessly into the tray, but the 2.5-inch drive needs to be screwed in.
Once you have your drives installed in the trays simply slide them back into the hard drive cage.
Now it is time for the power supply. It slides in on the opposite side of the case. The power supply we are using is larger than your typical unit and we had no issues getting it in the Core X1.
Finally it is time to install our graphics card. I decided to use the largest graphics card I had, which is the Sapphire Radeon R9 280X Toxic. This card fit inside the Core X1 no problem at all. It came a little close to the optical drive, but remember you can actually remove the optical drive bays to fit graphics cards up to 400 mm.
The last step is to wire everything up. Even with an full system installed there is a lot of room inside.
