A Closer Look - Inside

To gain access to the interior, you will have to remove the thumb screws holding the panels in place. Inside, things looks quite roomy as there are no optical drive bays. Antec has also placed a shroud over the PSU bay to ensure you can keep the look and feel of the DF-500 as clean as possible. The shroud is completely solid with the exception of a small opening in the front, so you may install a 360 mm radiator in the front. There are also two SSD mounting locations which can then be seen when taking a peek through the window.


On the backside, you can clearly see that there are no rubber grommets for the openings around the motherboard tray. A small PCB controls the colors of the RGB fans. Antec simply re-purposed the reset button to act as a toggle switch. Two additional SSD trays bring the total number of such drives that may be added to the DF-500 to four.


There is around 18 mm of space between the side panel and backside of the motherboard tray, which doesn't seem like much. However, it should be enough to keep all the unnecessary cables routed and hidden from view.


Two 3.5" drive bays have been tugged away underneath the shroud, with the entire front intended for cooling—either air cooling or for a radiator of up to 360 mm in size.


The PSU bay underneath the shroud is pretty standard, with small foam tips that are used to decouple the power supply from the chassis. Above that, the seven expansion slots come with six breakout covers, as previously mentioned.


Looking at the ceiling, you can clearly see mounting holes for the three 120 mm or two 140 mm fans. While centered in the ceiling, there still appears to be enough space to allow for at least some fans without interference with the motherboard. A thick radiator along with fans may get in the way, however.


The DF-500 comes with all the standard cables to connect both buttons and the I/O, but also includes a slew of 4-pin connectors to allow you to expand the RGB elements within the chassis and control them with that re-purposed reset button. A Molex connector delivers the power needed for all these elements.