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The interior is as spacious as you might expect with a case of this size, affording room for four 5.25" external bays, one 3.5" external bay, and seven 3.5" internal bays, while still leaving plenty of room for the motherboard and power supply. The 5.25" bays use a rail-less slide-in system, with the special rounded screws provided, right there on the support brace, along with a couple of spare thumbscrews. Given this bit of cleverness, it seems odd that the rest of the screws are tossed in a plastic baggie as an afterthought. A case-mounted toolbox to hold the rest would have been a welcome addition, but seems to have been overlooked. The hard drive bays are turned 90 degrees, to face towards you as you look in from the side. Combined with the snap-in drive rails, this makes changing out hard drives easy and painless. Another oddity strikes here, however. While the rails hold the drives solidly in place, they have a curious tendency to pop off of their attachment if you happen to nudge them when they're not currently holding a drive. Not a huge problem, but minorly aggravating if you are in the habit of frequently swapping out drives. |
Looking a little closer at the hard drive bay, we see a plastic rack for mounting three 90mm fans, one atop the other. Given the Aegis' total lack of front intake fans, this is a necessity for anybody who runs fast, hot hard drives. The mounting bracket is accessed by removing the left side panel, and is fixed to the chassis with a single screw. I didn't have any 90mm fans handy to test this out, but mounting looks to be a simple matter of positioning and screwing in the fans.
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The motherboard area is spacious, with more holes for standoffs than you are ever likely to need. In another oddity, only four of the nine standard standoffs for an ATX motherboard were pre-placed, though putting in the remaining five was a simple matter of locating the holes marked "A" and screwing them in by hand. Chieftec did not include any kind of motherboard I/O backplate, but since every enthusiast motherboard comes with its own, this is not a big issue. Expansion cards are held in place with either screws, or the provided hold-down bracket. My video card has connectors all the way up the faceplate, which prevented use of the bracket. This was not a problem, however, as the bracket is easily removed. |
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