Assembly

Installing the mainboard is done in a traditional manner. Simply place the included black spacers in the appropriate locations and screw the board down with the correct screws. As you can see, I have routed all the cables through the opening in the mainboard tray to keep things nice and clean. There is so much space that you can easily fit an eATX board along with even the longest graphics cards. While the XFX Radeon 5830 is a mainstream card, it is fairly long. However, there is much more space for more powerful cards.


The pair of plastic locks intended to secure the card snap in place quite forcefully, so you will not have to worry about anything. The locks are actually padded with a thin piece of foam, which also eliminates the possibility of vibration in this area as well.


The preperation for the hard drive is also a very easy task and is achieved without any tools or screws. Simply snap the 3.5 inch drive unto the pins of the tray and you are ready to go. Only those wanting to utilize an SSD or 2.5" drive will need to use a screw driver and the included screws. Once placed on the tray, simply slide it into the slot of your choice. The tray will snap into place nicely, but those worried about the slight wiggle, can use a single screw to pin the tray down as well.


To install a 5.25 inch drive, you have to pull off the front first to take out the drive bay cover. Once the space is opened, simply slide the drive into place and lock it down by pushing down on the two locks. This holds the unit in place alright, but still allows for quite a bit of play. I would suggest you use a screw or two to make sure it does not start vibrating when in use.


The last step is easily done by placing the power supply in the appropriate location. As you can see the XFX 850W unit - which is fairly long already, looks minuscule within the Colossus. This means that even the biggest PSUs should fit easily. All the cables are routed nicely behind the mainboard tray, keeping the clutter to an absolute minimum. Turning the filled chassis around, we can see the result of this. All the nasty looking wires are running along this side. It looks like the hole in the mainboard tray - although rather large - is not big enough as the CPU socket of the MSI board is a tad bit too high and thus the backplate becomes inaccessible.

Finished Looks

After replacing both side panels after connecting them to their respective power cords. let us take a quick look at the unique cable routing possibility for your input devices. As you can see, I have routed the keyboard through one of the grooves, down the right side and out the bottom of the chassis. This is excellent, as you will not have any unnecessary clutter on your table top if you chose to place the Colossus on your desk. Taking a quick look at the rear, reveals no abnormalities and all installed devices are easily accessible.

LED Lighting Gallery

We usually do not have a lighting gallery, but BitFenix has outdone itself with the extensive and embedded LEDs within the Colossus. You get a choice of blue or red LEDs which you can toggle on or off. The third mode allows you to let one of these colors pulsate slowly on and off, something which should look incredible during a dark LAN party - if you have the strength to carry the case around. Even the cut out BitFenix logo looks excellent. It may had been even better if the brand name was cut out somewhere as well, for additional exposure and brand building, but the phoenix is rather unique and should suffice as far as branding is concerned.