Detailed Interior Features

Looking behind the motherboard tray, we can see the plastic sleds used to secure the 3.5" drives.

Just below the CPU cooler access cutout are two removable 2.5" drive trays. These are perfect for SSDs or 2.5" hard drives. This is a much nicer implementation as compared to other cases that simply drill four extra holes in the motherboard tray and call it an "SSD mounting point".

Here's the breakout block for the built-in fan controller. It can handle up to 10 fans, but since the entire controller is only rated for 30 watts, be cautious about connecting powerful, high-speed fans and keep track of your total fan wattage.

NZXT usually combines a low price with high quality, but they fell down on these drive sleds. The nicest thing I can say about these extremely flimsy bits of plastic is that they work reasonably well for 3.5" drives, whose width serves to keep the sides of the sled far out enough to fully engage the slots in the drive bays. However, there's virtually no tension holding the sides of the sled out, so if you mount a 2.5" drive in the middle of the sled (screws are provided for this), you will almost certainly have problems with the sled not being secure in its drive bay. These are the same flimsy sleds used in the otherwise excellent Phantom 820 case and it's disappointing to see them here as well. If you're mounting a 2.5" device, you can help a little by physically flexing the sides of the drive sled outwards, but beware: it's easy to break the sides off completely.

NZXT seems to be one of the few case companies that actually builds systems in their cases. With over an inch of clearance between the back of the motherboard tray and the side panel, along with copious tie-down points, you should have no trouble finding room for all your cables.

OK, let's actually build a system in this case...

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