|

There are two hard drive cages, one in the lower chamber and one in the upper chamber. I installed 4 hard drives in the lower area and 2 in the upper. The hard drive cages come already setup with rubber grommets (extras included in fastener kit) for mounting the drives. These will definitely help with vibration noises from spin up/down of the drives. Behind the upper hard drive cage is a handy little plastic storage box. Actually it's not really that handy as you have to remove the cage to get at it but once everything's setup its good for storing the leftover screws. All the supplied fasteners came here. At first I didn't see this and thought they were omitted from my shipment.
The case comes standard with 2x120mmx120mmx25mm and 1x120mmx120mmx38mm TriCool fans. These fans have a three position switch on them for low, medium and high fan speeds. One of the 25mm fans is located in the back of the case; the other is on the top. The 38mm fan is located in the center of the bottom compartment between the hard drive cage and the power supply. Unfortunately due to the 38mm width I had to remove this fan. I'm using an OCZ Technology 520 watt PowerStream and because of its length it just wouldn't fit with the fan in place. The cables would have been hitting the blades. Even if Antec had supplied a 25mm wide fan it would most likely interfere with power supply cables. It also came equipped with no fan guard. Frayed wires anyone?
There is a spot in front of the top hard drive cage to add a 120mm fan if you so desire. I'm rather anal when it comes to cooling so of course I installed one. Cooler components mean longer life for said components.
There's also a spot to add 120mm fan to the front of the lower hard drive cage. For some reason though Antec decided to make it to narrow to fit a standard 25mm fan. I ended up installing an 80mmx80mmx15mm fan that I happened to have. This dramatically helped the cooling of the 4 hard drives I mounted there. By adding this fan my hard drive temperatures dropped a full 10° Celsius. Temperatures went from close to 40° to around 30°. A definite improvement and should help with overall hard drive performance and longevity.
There is also a shroud, I guess you would call it. It has a space for an 80mm fan to draw heat away from your video card and out the back of the case. I mounted a low speed Panaflo fan in mine just to help move a little bit of air but keep it quiet. Its placement is somewhat inconvenient though and will be especially so for enthusiast users as we tend to change hardware often. It's a bit too wide to use if you have a tall video card and it blocks access to the motherboard. In my case it blocks access to all the PCI slots and more importantly the CMOS clear jumper. If you are an overclocker you know how important this can be. The shroud installed with a fan really didn't lower my overall temperatures that much and they were well within margin of error. A 1° difference is not worth the hassle to me.

|