A Closer Look - Inside

Gaining access to the interior of the cases is refreshingly easy: simply pull on the door to open it up. These panels use solid hinges, which use the weight of the part to stay in place, so while you cannot tip the case on its top as the doors would simply fall off when opened all the way, the easy detachment makes the assembly process much easier. As the case has two compartments, multiple holes around the mainboard tray allow for cable to be routed from one area to the other. These are lined with thick, industrial rings, so that you won't have to worry about cutting yourself or damaging any cables when doing so.


Taking a look at the main side which houses the motherboard tray and external drive bays. there is not really a lot of the latter to see upon first sight. The only thing that hints at these bays are the separate covers which are also visible from the outside. Each of these is held in place by tall thumb screws, hidden behind the front panel.


In the rear, the eight motherboard expansion slots are protected by solid covers, each held in place by a thumb screw. Thanks to the free space below these, it is possible to route cables through the bottom openings from the other compartment for a clean inner look. Interestingly enough, CaseLabs has pre-applied the motherboard spacers in the chassis. You just have to make sure that you remove the ones which you do not require, as those may end up causing a short when turning the system on. Above the bays is an opening for an 120 mm fan to push hot air out the back of the chassis. A large hole in the tray should give you access to the CPU cooler backplate without having to pull out the entire board in the process.


In the other compartment are the hard drive bays along with the openings for the PSUs. CaseLabs includes one contraption to hold up to four 3.5 inch hard drives. You may install up to eight 2.5 inch drives in here but require the optional brackets to do so. Below these bays are two more spots to install such units, for a total of 12 3.5" bays.


Before we dive into the assembly process, let us take a quick look at the cabling. As we do not have any I/O in the front, there are only the case headers for the power and reset buttons. Even though the cables are colored, CaseLabs has sleeved these with black mesh to go with the rest of the chassis.