A Closer Look - Inside

Before we dive into the interior of the chassis, there is a little surprise behind the side panel's plastic bits. These apparently serve a functional purpose as both have small embedded fans that push some fresh air from the front across the hard drives inside the chassis.


The Z11 NEO's interior is quite traditional, with the drive bays in the front and everything else toward the back. Looking at the back of the motherboard tray, there will be a large opening around the CPU cooler, and the tray has plenty of hooks to route and secure loose cables. You will also find a spot for a 2.5" SSD here.


You may pull the front off with a firm tug, which will reveal two 120mm fan-mounting positions a dust filter protects from grime. That layer is easily removed to reveal another pre-installed120mm fan.


You may install up to six 2.5'' or 3.5" hard drives inside the two cages in front. To give you some flexibility, each tray may be removed completely. Zalman engineered them very nicely, so they and the whole contraption is quite sturdy.


Even though the chassis only has a single 5.25" drive bay, Zalman has chosen to keep the tooling for the interior to three such bays by utilizing the bottom two for hard drives as well. To enable the user to do so, two metal hard drive trays ship with the Z11 NEO, which is certainly a very nice touch.


Turning our focus to the rear, the bottom PSU bay is pretty standard-fare, with four foam bumps on which a power supply will rest once installed. Above that are the seven expansion slots with their break-out covers and the white-bladed 120mm fan that pushes hot air out the back of the chassis.


You may also install a 120mm or 140mm cooling unit onto the floor of the Z11 NEO, but doing so will limit the PSU's length.


You will find the third and last pre-installed 120mm fan within the Z11 NEO in the top. This brings the total count up to five fans right out of the box. There is enough space in the ceiling to install a 240mm or even 280mm radiator without it getting in the way of the motherboard.


All the connectors within the chassis are of the default variety, so you should run into no issues while connecting these to a modern motherboard. Unfortunately, Zalman did not opt for black sleeving on some of these leads, which adds some disturbing color to a build.