Installation:

Installing the motherboard was very easy all the holes lined up perfectly with the standoffs.

In order to install the Power supply unit you have to remove a metal frame inside the lower compartment by removing four screws; two at each side.

The frame is padded with soft silicon like stripes to help absorb vibrations generated by the PSU.

Place the frame around the PSU before installing it, you don’t have to use the frame if you don’t want to, it is possible to fasten the Power supply the old fashioned way by mounting it using the rear threaded holes. But why not use it the way it was intended?

In this picture you see the Power supply unit installed in the lower right corner, there are also some cable ties attached to the back of the motherboard tray to help in guiding and to fasten cables which can be routed from this side.

This is a pretty good idea which makes it a lot easier to keep the actual case free from excessive cables. As you can see there are plenty of holes around the motherboard plate which you can use for cable routing.

I decided to mount the HDD’s in the lower compartment rack; this was a very problem free operation. And as you can see there are silicon cushions to prevent vibrations resonating in the case.

The DVD burner is mounted the typical “Antec way” with drive rails; no oddities here just fasten them and slide the burner into place.

A perfect fit…

And finally the top “spoiler” mounted.

Here’s the system fully assembled and ready to go. I didn’t put much effort into the routing of the cables as the extra room in the back of the case with the cable ties really. What should be considered though; is to make sure your Power supply unit has a long enough four pin 12 Volts cable. Mine is quite long so it didn’t present any trouble at all, but for those of you with shorter PSU cabling you might want to reconsider getting this case unless you are willing to spend money on an extension cable or even a new PSU.

With everything finally assembled it was time to start the machine up, and to our delight it booted just fine with very little noise. With the side doors in place only a slight hum could be heard with the fans on the “medium” setting. At high it wasn’t quiet anymore but to me it was not annoyingly loud, however some people have more sensitive ears. At the low setting only the graphic card fan could be heard it was amazingly quiet.

What should be taken into consideration with this case is that if you have a longer graphic card like an 8800GTX you may or may not be able to install any HDD’s into the upper rack. There might be some clearance issues with installed drives.

With the system running it was time to check the snakelight feature out, while this may seem like a really good feature it is more of a gimmick. Since it requires the computer to be turned on to work this kind of defeats the purpose of using it when working in the case. Most work is after all being made with the power completely shut off.