Closer Look: Interior

Of course, the interior is what this case is all about. SilverStone has designed the case so that the motherboard is rotated 90 degrees, with its ports and slots at the top of the case. The bottom of the case is dominated by three giant 180mm fans.

The other side of the case shows a tangle of wires. Each of the three fans at the bottom of the case has a three-pin power connector as well as a long, separate three-wire lead to a switch for selecting "low" or "high" speed at the top of the case. The wires are casually wrapped and secured with twist-ties; you'll definitely want to do some cleanup here. Cable sleeving or dedicated channels for the fan wires would have been appreciated.

There's room for five vertically-mounted hard drives, each of which screws into a slide-out plastic caddy. The screws pass through rubber isolators on the caddies to help curb any vibrations, and the 180mm fan directly under the drive bays will keep your Velocirators nice and cool. Unlike the other two fans, the drive cooling fan does without a honeycomb grille.

These two 180mm fans cool the motherboard area. Each of the three fans has a pull-out filter for easy cleaning. The fact that the case's metal "foot" runs the length of the case means these fans won't be scarfing up (much)carpet lint or floor dirt. A 12" long graphics card will be a millimeter or two above the fans; to fit a 12.2" long graphics card like an ATI Radeon 5970, you need to remove the honeycomb grille from the middle fan.

We continue checking out the interior in the next section.

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