There are tons of cases out there, but a lot of companies
put the time and effort into the exterior of the case rather
than the interior. However, this case doesn't disappoint
on the inside. There's the all important motherboard tray,
which allows us to easily remove the motherboard, AGP, and
PCI cards without unscrewing every individual piece. This
makes installing processors, ram, graphics cards, and much
more easier than trying to work inside a cramped computer
case. The other thing we watch out for are sharp edges.
When you're setting up your computer the last thing that
you want to be doing is scraping and cutting your hands
on sharp edges inside the computer case. Thankfully, Xoxide
did a good job of eliminating most, but not all of them.
The removable motherboard tray makes upgrading
easy.
We also expect the case to
be able to hold plenty of components. No problem there,
this case holds a ton! Four external 5 1/4" bays, one
external 3.5" bay, and five internal 3.5" bays
should be more than plenty. However, I'd really discourage
anyone who wishes to fill all five 3.5" bays with hard
drives, unless you have some massive cooling. How the PSU
is held in was also thought out. On most of the cases I've
seen, there is a piece of metal underneath the center of
the PSU to support it, while on this there's a small piece
on each side. This allows PSUs that have fans on the bottom
to fit without any problems.
Look at all those bays!
Then there's air-flow. This
is one area this case could take a lesson in. One 60mm fan
can be installed into the front of this case, the only problem
is that there's nowhere for it to suck air in from. There's
a small opening on the bottom of the case, but this just
doesn't cut it when other cases have 2 or more 80mm fans
blowing in tons of air. The back of the case is average,
there's room for one 80mm fan. Although we would have loved
to see two fans, our overclocking was not effected by slightly
increased temperatures.
The front fan is too small, and it has nowhere
to suck air in from.
Inside are all the connectors
to make the cases front panel and buttons to operate. The
front bezel is lit by a blue LED, which instead of plugging
into the motherboard actually uses an adaptor to plug into
a free molex connector (and yes, it is a passthrough connector).
The rest of the connectors are the usual, a labeled power
button, reset button, hdd, and two usb connectors which
are 5 pin each. I would have liked to see the usb connectors
as a whole, instead of each wire individual, but that's
nothing major.
