A Closer Look - Inside

Simply remove the two thumbscrews holding each panel in place to access the interior. As expected, the entire interior of the MS800 Plus is black to go with the overall look of things. The motherboard tray features a lot of cable-routing possibilities, with holes running along the top and side of the motherboard. None of them come equipped with rubber grommets, though, which will make a clean look a bit more difficult. All the cables interestingly enough come nicely pre-wired, saving you a few minutes of work. The 25 mm between the tray and side panel should hide and route cables well enough for most builds.


Zalman also includes a plastic support beam running down the middle of the main side. This is a nice little feature and will be useful when securing heavy graphics cards or installing that additional 80 mm fan. Unfortunately, the two screws holding the plastic beam in place were screwed in so tight that they were not removable. They instead stripped completely—irregardless of which bit was used. All our parts luckily squeezed past the bar without much issue.


Taking a look at the front, the hard drive cage can be found in the very bottom. As the entire front is lined with the same drive bays, moving the cage to a different location should be easy. It comes equipped with a single 92 mm fan pulling air through the front, across any installed drive and into the chassis. You also only need a single Molex plug to power all drives because of the PCB, while there are individual SATA data ports for each unit. Last but not least, the cooling fan is connected to the PCB as well. Above this elaborate cage are the normal drive bays featuring locking systems out of plastic. While this is a nice marketing feature, these most likely won't hold any installed drives well, forcing you to resort to traditional screws.


The PSU bay in the rear has two long bumps for support. Each is lined with foam as an anti-vibration measure. Above that are the seven expansion slots and the 120 mm exhaust fan, which is equipped with white blades and blows air out the back of the MS800 Plus.


A third (or forth if you count the separate 80 mm unit) fan is installed to the ceiling of the case. This one is all clear, comes equipped with blue LEDs, and has a diameter of 120 mm. You unfortunately won't be able to install any water-cooling radiators larger than 120 or 140 mm because of the second fan placement, but having four fans included in a case of this price is a nice change to the trend of adding less and less cooling units out of the box.


Before we dive into the assembly process, let us take a quick look at the included cables. Not only do you get the standard case and I/O connectors, but you will also find the leads to connect up to six 3-pin fans to the integrated fan controller. A Molex cable is used to deliver power to all of them.