Assembly

Installing the motherboard is done by traditional means, with the use of spacers and screws. You may need to reach in through the top of the chassis if you don't have a screwdrivers that is compact enough. Installing a 140 mm top-blow cooler is easily done, and you should also easily be able to fit 140 mm tower variants within the chassis. The long case cables also allowed me to route everything through the bottom area, keeping the top half as clean as possible. Large graphics cards will easily fit as there is no internal 3.5" drive bay to block off any PCIe plugs.


Xigmatek employs their own hard-drive trays, which are of the flex-to-install kind. While empty, the trays have a crossbar to ensure it stays in place. You will need to remove the crossbar to install a 3.5" storage drive, which is done without any tools. You will also leave the crossbar in place while installing smaller units. Such small drives require the use of traditional screws to be held in place.


Once the trays are filled, simply slide them back into the chassis until they snap down into place and you are good to go.


While you may install SSDs and traditional 2.5" drives into the larger trays, the ideal solution would be to equip them with rubber rings and screws and slide them into the special bays on the floor of the chassis. Preparing these drives is supposed to take a screwdriver, but you may also use your fingers because of the rubber rings.


However, installing an optical drive definitely takes a screwdriver. You have to free the bay to slide the drive in. Secure it with the screws Xigmatek provides. As I am using a fairly large cooler, the ODD nearly touches the fan, but all is still in the green.


The chassis is pretty compact, so you will have to watch the length of your power supply. We used a modular Seasonic unit in our review and had to pre-connect all the required leads before sliding the unit into place. You will definitely have a hard time reaching such connectors once everything is in place.


With everything installed, the Aquila's top compartment makes a very nice and clean impression, which is achieved by hiding the cable mess inside the enclosure's lower half.

Finished Looks

With everything in place, the Xigmatek Aquila does make a very solid impression. Its plastic elements essentially "hug" the optical drive, so it does not look out of place. In terms of an LED, there is a small glowing dot on the side of the chassis. It would have been nice to have something closer to the power button itself, but this will do, of course.


You can see some of the hardware within the chassis, but the window's tint and my near-black components combined really force you to take a very close look to make anything out. The interior would obviously be much more readily visible inside the white version of the Aquila. Taking a quick peak at the top with everything installed, the ODD drive is so close to the top of the chassis that any installed cooling fan will unfortunately block off the external drive bay for certain.