A Closer Look - Inside

To gain access to the chassis, simply remove the thumb screws holding the side panels in place. These panels are painted black as well - inside and out. The interior layout of the Coolbay HX is quite simple, but certainly effective. NOX has chosen to go with trusted and true methods instead of trying to innovate everything. This is certainly a good thing, as it ultimatively keeps the price down, while giving you a very functional set of features. The rear of the mainboard plate also holds a nice little surprise. There are two zip ties with the possibility to install even more. This should make it easy to keep the interior of the chassis clean.


To install external devices you need to pull off the front of the chassis. It is held in place with plastic clips, so there is no screw driver required. As you can see there is a hard drive cage on the bottom.


This bay can hold a total of four hard drives. It is lined with foam to reduce any vibration from the storage devices, while a 120 mm fan with blue LEDs is used for active cooling. This cage is simply inserted into the front of the chassis, taking up three 5.25 inch bays. This leaves six further openings for such devices. The hard drive cage has quite an elaborate design. It is constructed mainly of steel, with a plastic frame to hold the fan in place.



Moving the focus to the rear, the power supply bay has four sturdy foam mounts. This gives the power supply fan a bit of room to breath, while also reducing any chance of vibration passing unto the chassis itself. Sadly, none of the vents on the bottom have a dust filter, so your power supply will fill up with dust quite quickly in most surroundings. Above that the seven expansion slots are covered by seperate metal pieces, which do not need to be broken out of the case to be removed. These are held in place with thumb screws as well. Above that, you will find the rear fan, which does not feature any LEDs.


The top fan, which also lacks LEDs can easily be seen when looking up within the Coolbay HX. It pulls hot air out of the case. Both 200 mm fans use a Molex connector for power, but the top one is the only one which can be controlled by the pre-wired, red switch in the back of the chassis. The bottom air vent, intended for an optional, fifth fan does not feature a dust filter either.


NOX has opted to make four of the stand-offs part of the mainboard tray. These are small bumps, which means that you won't need as many seperate stand-offs. Having worked in the industry before joining Techpowerup.com, I can tell you that such a bump as a stand-off may cause a short once you have pieced together your system. This happens with some mainboards, on which solder points happen to be a bit longer or pointier on the underside of the board. These will touch the stand-off and if two of them do, may cause a short. I suggest simply placing a piece of tape over each bump, creating an insulating layer. The I/O cables are of the standard variety and should work on every mainboard out there.