ATX: Fractal Design ION+ 650W 80 Plus Gold SFX: Fractal Design ION SFX-L 650W 80 Plus Gold Provided by: Fractal Design
Cooling:
be quiet! Pure Loop 120/240/280/360 Provided by: be quiet!
Assembly
Installing the motherboard is done by traditional means, using spacers and screws. There is not a lot of room on the bottom edge of the board, but some at the top. However, those openings will partly be blocked by fans or liquid cooling. As previously mentioned, the row of cable-routing holes to the right of the board is covered by the motherboard, leaving just the column in the very front.
Adding the GPU already meant breaking out one of the non-reusable covers. That said, most long GPUs will fit inside the case just fine.
Installing an SSD on any of the trays is easy, and these trays may be filled outside of the chassis and then placed back onto the backside of the motherboard tray, on top of the 3.5" HDD cage or shown off on top of your shroud.
To include a 3.5" drive in your build, pull the cage out from underneath the shroud. It is engineered to fit both a 3.5" and a 2.5" unit, with a third, tray-based 2.5" mounting slot in the top. All drives are secured by traditional screws, and once filled, you may simply slide the whole thing back and use the two thumb screw to pin it down.
Getting the PSU into the bay was a bit of a squeeze in terms of the height of the shroud. One has to watch the USB 2.0 and audio cables of the case a little in the process. But once in place, just secure it with classic screws with about 2" of room to the hard drive cage for any cables you may have.
Lastly, installing the 240 AIO was a bit tricky since the side without any tubing is slightly shorter, which resulted in the fans colliding with the motherboard heatsink and had me rotate it around and push it as far towards the front as possible to barely fit it all. The result works just fine with the Pure Loop 240 mm unit, but it would depend on the AIO you use. Overall, the case makes a good impression in terms of cleanliness. Even though the frame employs weird domes as "zip-tie hooks," our slightly thicker, red variants fit through these with a bit of tough love. We also spent a bit of time cleaning up the cables for the four fans as each comes with two leads, and we had to find a place for the separate ARGB controller.
Finished Looks
With the SilverStone FARA B1 Pro turned on, you can see the ARGB glow from the three fan hubs in the front as well as the shine from the rear. A nice white power LED turns on as soon as the system is up and running.
The glow of the ARGB LEDs in the hubs of the three fans is dimmed considerably through the dark acrylic, while you can clearly see all your hardware through the clear glass side panel.
With the ARGB controller connected to the unlabeled button in the top of the FARA B1 Pro, you may cycle through a good set of single and multi-color animations, or select from among the solid color options below.