Assembly

Before installing the motherboard, you have to remove the vertical GPU mounting bracket. While you won't need the lengthy screwdriver I used, odds are you will need a slightly longer one compared to a traditional one. With it removed, you can easily mount your board with the supplied screws. The board is surrounded on three sides with the unique cable routing openings perfectly. While HAVN advertises the ability to install E-ATX boards, such boards will overhang the left grommets by a bit, but still leave about half exposed, so you can still wire things up. The only downside is the lack of structural support for such a board on that edge.


Connecting the cables through the grommet grills works extremely well. Unlike traditional grommets there are no rubber flaps being pushed out of shape and the light gray clips work really well to keeping the soft grilles nice and straight. It is rare to see innovation that immediately makes sense, but this grommet system is a great example.


Due to the vertical GPU mount you really have to make sure that everything is connected to any of the ports at the bottom edge of your board first. The PCIe cable clips into the primary slot of the board with adequate cable length. This is a mostly a non-issue, since the vast majority of modern motherboards skip the very top most slot these days, but should your board be one of the rare variants, that PCIe cable may not be long enough. While this is an edge case, we did inform HAVN of this, so lets hope that future cases have one that is just 10 mm longer. But, again, as you can see, using our modern board, there are no issues whatsoever. Adding the 3 slot GPU is really close to the board itself, which is good, as it gives the GPU as much room to breathe and for the unique airflow system to do its job as well.


Speaking of which, you will have to remove the angled fan mounting bracket and secure the separate, gently bent glass panel to it before placing it back into the chassis. This glass panel is actually really thin, so you just have to be a little bit more careful, but once in place there is no reason to be worried at all. Metal would have looked so much worse in a case like this, so the benefits of the clear material far outweigh the material strength of steel.


Each of the storage boxes is held in place with small screws and may be removed separately. Inside each, there is a separate tray if you intend to fill it with 2.5" drives. As there are mounting holes on the floor of each box as well, this means that each of these can hold either a single 3.5" unit or two 2.5" drives. The only downside is the fact that encasing the drives like this will increase their operating temperature as well.


To add two 2.5" drives, you first have to secure one unto the separate tray and one to the floor of storage box using the supplied screws. Then the tray can be slid back into place. HAVN has designed these so that the drives are offset. This ensures you can easily connect all SATA power and data ports easily. But, the top drive is also pretty recessed, so reaching its interface is harder than it needs to be.


Opting for a single 3.5" drive is done in a similar faction by securing it to the floor of the storage box. With these, its ports are at the edge of the box cover, which should make it as easy as possible with a setup like this to wire everything up.


Once filled, simply put the whole plate with the storage boxes back into place. As expected, the connectors are hidden away a bit, but certainly not impossible to reach - especially if you connect everything and the screw down the frame holding them all in place. HAVN has added Velcro strips here, so you can also easily manage all power and data wires - even if you were to install eight 2.5" drives in total.


The PSU bay is perfectly accessible and can hold big units, so you can have your pick in terms of capacity and efficiency. The fan of the unit is meant to face outward as the vented side panel will allow it to take in fresh air.


We installed our 360 mm AIO in the ceiling of the HAVN HS 420 VGPU, which was a breeze thanks to the separate frame. HAVN could have added a third row of mounting holes at the top edge, to allow for 120 mm wide units to be installed even further away from the motherboard and thus increasing compatibility with memory for thick units with push/pull setups. Even so, there is lots of space between the board and a classic AIO, so you still have some flexibility to go beyond such a traditional setup. As you can see, there are no wires shown, as all the wiring is routed along the top trench behind the motherboard tray.


The final result of the assembly process is gorgeous for a classic ATX board. Remember, this is not a BTF format, so you are bound to see cables bend around from behind to connect to the edges of the board. But thanks to the unique grommet grills and SimpliCable trenches, all the wiring is neatly spread around the back of the motherboard, only to pop up exactly where you need it to. All this could be achieved without using a single zip tie, which also speaks volumes. The result is probably the cleanest "fish tank" chassis wiring setup we have seen to date.

Finished Looks

With all the exterior panels back in place and the system turned on, you are greeted by a subtle white LED at the center of the power button. The system looks absolutely gorgeous and one can easily imagine how a system loaded up with fans and RGB components will simply enrich that visual experience. Thanks to the unique rear design, any fans you install there won't take away from the look and feel all the gently rounded surfaces provide either, giving you complete choice to use whatever fans you like.


Looking straight at the case is an excellent tell of the thoughtful tooling and wiring capabilities of the case, as this is usually the angle where you can see loose cables even if there is a vertical GPU involved. In the rear, thanks to the cover, everything is far cleaner than other cases. If HAVN had added a way to do exterior cable management on top of that, it would have been flawless, even with a lot of wires.


Taking a peek at the system from the side, any fans you would install in the floor would be on full display as well, so odds are you would want to splurge and get inverted ones there to make the most of this view. Thanks to the clear glass, all your hardware will be on full display regardless. Turning the HAVN HS 420 VGPU around, you can see the colors of some of the stickers shine through, which also means air will find its way into the case as well.