Expandability

Expansion is not a problem with this case. It was designed to be a file server, so you get lots of drive bays for hard drives, CD-ROMS, as well as enough room for anything else you might want to add. Unless the case standards change dramatically with in the next few years, you can pretty much be sure this case will be compatible with any new ATX motherboards coming out, even Xeon motherboards. Unless you have an AT motherboard, or anything other than ATX, you might have a problem. The 400W power supply I used (which is from Antec also) has enough connections and power output to keep almost anything I put in there happily powered. The standard 300W supply they had in there before is more than enough for what most people would put in there. Not only do you get 2 fans as standard, you also have 2 more fan holders if you want to add more fans in the future.

As neat as I can get it...

Installation

My workstation...All I need is a woman on the bed

Installation with this case was very straight forward. Everything was assembled already so there wasn't really anything major to do with the case before putting everything in. The case came with a small manual that basically identified all the parts of the case. Like I said, there wasn't much to do so the manual didn't really have to be too extensive. However, if you're new to computers or if this is your first time putting one together, you'll probably have to refer to your motherboard documentation for more info. The first thing I did was remove everything from my old case. That took about half an hour. I didn't realize how dusty it was in there, so I had to clean the components before they went in the new case. The case also comes with two standard 80mm fans, and has room for 2 more optional fans. I had a couple 80mm 3dfx Cool fans laying around, so I added those in for a total of 4 (2 intake, 2 blowing out).

Take a look at that roomy interior

Once everything was ready to go in, I started with the power supply first. I switched the stock 300W power supply with the 400W one. After that trivial task, I proceeded to install the motherboard. The case came with all the screws and motherboard spacers I needed. Everything fit nicely in to the case. I was disappointed to find that this case lacked the removable motherboard rack my old Inwin case has. It was no big deal though, the case has more than enough room to install everything. After the motherboard was installed, I put in my two hard drives, floppy, & CD-ROM. The hard drive and floppy installation was easy enough because of the quick release drive bays. The SX1030 has special holders for the 5.25" external drive bays. You don't have to worry about losing these things since they have their own holders at the bottom of the case. These holders just screw on to the CD-ROM drive and then I can just slide it into the front slot. However, before I can do that I have to remove the slot cover, which is not as easy as it sounds. I had to remove the entire front panel to take one of the slot covers off. After that, it was time to install the rest of the cards and connect the wires.

The case is surprisingly roomy inside, even though it isn't as tall as my Inwin 500. I installed my video card, sound card, & network card, with no problems. The power and IDE cables, were easy to install, but since the IDE cables haven't been tube wrapped yet, they blocked some of the air flow from the lower intake fan. I plan to slice up those wires and wrap them up later on. After I inspected every wire and was satisfied that everything was properly connected, I started up the computer. It started up on the first try with no problems at all. Gotta love it when you do something right the first time :). So on to the performance testing.

>> Performance