A Closer Look - Inside

To access the interior of the chassis, simply remove the two thumbscrews holding the side panel in place. The panel comes off easily enough. One can now clearly see the secondary cover within the chassis. While it is made of plastic, BitFenix gave it a bit of visual texture to make it stand out. I could see the company offer up some customizability by selling colored variants of the internal cover as an accessory. The interior looks much more traditional once this cover is removed.


Openings in the tray allow for basic cable management and there is around 20 mm worth of space to hide any unwanted leads behind the motherboard tray. Rubber grommets covering the holes in the motherboard tray would have been nice, but none of the cables should turn into eye sores as they blend in well against the black interior of the chassis.


The Ronin can hold a total of six 2.5" or 3.5" hard drives between its two cages. You may remove the top cage if you happen to have very long graphics cards or require the space for a pump or reservoir. Above that are the three external drive bays, each featuring a plastic locking mechanism. While this is nice, experiences with past cases have shown that this locking system does not hold a drive well enough.


Turning our focus to the rear, we have the aforementioned PSU bay on the bottom. Four foam pads there are supposed to stop any vibrations on the spot. Above that are the seven standard motherboard expansion bays, with each cover held in place by a thumbscrew. The pre-installed 120 mm fan pushes air out the back and comes with a 3-pin motherboard header. As this is an actual retail fan you can buy, it comes with all-black cables, which is good to see in an all-black case.


One of the bigger structural changes to the Shinobi is in the ceiling of the Ronin. It now offers much better compatibility to water-cooling setups and allows both 240 or 280 mm radiators to be installed. Thanks to the thicker top, placing the fans above the frame also saves space.


All the I/O and case cables have been sleeved black, which means that there is not a single colored wire present to disturb the all-black interior. None of the connectors are anything out of the ordinary, so you should have no trouble getting everything hooked up to the motherboard of your choice.