A Closer Look - Inside

To access to each compartment, remove the two thumbscrews holding each of these extremely heavy covers in place. You can slide each cover off once done. The top pod holds not only the graphics card, but three 2.5" trays. Each of these comes with a hot-swap PCB, so you will not have to worry about routing cables through the chassis and to the motherboard - Deepcool has taken care of that bit for you.


You will also find the only fan within the Tristellar in this compartment. It is 92 mm large and rather important as it gives the GPU access to some fresh air. The expansion slots in the rear are protected by individual, metal-mesh covers.


Rotating the bare case to put the motherboard compartment on top, its interior looks much simpler, with nothing but the mounting positions for the board toward the rear of the chassis and enough room for a 120 mm radiator/fan or HDD cage. We will use this space to give the CPU the best-possible cooling configuration as there is absolutely no need for additional hard-drive cages within the Tristellar. Most ITX boards offer six SATA ports, all of which the chassis will utilize with its optional cage.


The space in front is quite simple and comes with an opening for the radiator. You can also clearly see the front's silver element through the metal mesh. The motherboard tray in the rear comes with the four spacers for mini-ITX boards and a pre-routed PCIe ribbon cable to connect the GPU in the compartment we took a look at before with the motherboard.


Last but not least, there is the pod for the PSU and some more drives. You can fit a PSU of up to 160 mm in length into the pod, but it would make for a really tight fit, so make sure to use a PSU that is at most 145 mm long instead.


These two cages may hold two 3.5" drives and also come with an embedded PCB with the required power and data connectors. As with Deepcool's 2.5" variants, these have been pre-routed to their appropriate locations to ensure you only have to connect the power and SATA cables. In-between these two cages is the slimline ODD bay. It, interestingly enough, does not have a PCB with a connector, which would have proven extremely helpful since routing and connecting its cables properly will prove rather difficult. The PSU bay in the rear comes with two sets of mounting holes, but I would advice you to have the PSU's fan face toward the compartment's air vent.


You will find various cables within the Tristellar, all of which come with black sleeving. All the cables - the I/O plugs, chassis connectors, Molex power and SATA data leads - are of the standard variety. While Molex plugs to power SATA drives are just fine, actual SATA cables would have been more appropriate, at least for the 2.5" drives, just to give the user some idea on which cables lead to which drives, all while allowing for greater PSU compatibility because of a more balanced mix of connectors.