A Closer Look - Inside

Gaining access to the interior of the chassis is rather hard, as the panels do not come off easily on this prototype, but Cubitek has already altered the panel to eliminate this issue in the final version. The interior is not very elaborate and everything has been placed where you would expect to see it. Turning the XL-Tank around you can clearly see the many openings to route cables through.


The PSU bay is lined with foam and there is an opening here to allow cool air to reach the power supply. There is no dust filter on here yet, but there should be one present in the final version. All the external expansion slots are held in place by thumb screws. They all have vents to allow for air to pass through. The 140 mm fan has an interesting blade shape and comes equipped with a very short 3-pin cable. This means that you can connect the fan straight to your mainboard or extend it with the provided cable - if required.


In the front is a large, 6-bay hard drive cage. It features rails in which the hard drives are pushed with the help of large rubber spacers. These spacers are fixed upon the drives beforehand and eliminate any vibrations. A locking bar runs down the left side of the cage - much like what we have seen in Lian Li cases. Above that are the four external drive bays, which look quite simple. Cubitek includes thumb screws so that you may secure any devices without the use of a screw driver.


After removing two thumb screws, the entire hard drive cage can be pulled out. Turns out there are two 2.5 inch bays on the very bottom. You can install SSDs in this location, but will have a hard time reaching it once everything has been installed. The 200 mm fan is clear and comes equipped with LEDs. The cable of this fan is also very short, so you probably will be forced to use an extension cable for this one.


Cubitek has placed a little trap door under the PSU bay, so that you can easily open it up and reach the dust filter - a cool little touch. There are two more fans in the ceiling of the XL-Tank, bringing the total to four. These also have LEDs and very short cables once again.


You can simply pry of the front off the chassis. As you can see there is a large dust filter which covers the front intake fan. The covers of each drive bay are not secured with anything, just like the ones in Lian Li enclosures. Little knobs on the side snap into place and hold quite well. A single screw holds the support bar for the expansion cards in place. Removing that, allows you to flip this entire bar down and to gain unrestricted access to the chassis.


All the cables, including the two USB 3.0 plugs are black. While the sample has very thin cables of the mainboard connectors will be replaced with standard ones in the retail version.