The front bezel, consisting of a thick layer of acrylic and aluminum, is secured by the six large-headed screws. Care should be taken when removing the screws to prevent damage to them. The acrylic piece comes off easily enough, but the aluminum sheet takes more work. It often gets caught by the drive bay covers, any drives that might be installed, and the front access ports. Removal takes some effort. However, it should be noted that there is no need to remove the bezel, besides curiosity or want to do some sort of modification to the chassis.
Like almost every other high-end case out there, the gTower includes thumbscrews for tool-free access. They hold the side panels on, secure the removable drive cage, and are found on the expansion card brackets. Right off the bat, working with this case will be harder because of its lack of a removable motherboard tray. Although this makes installation somewhat more difficult, it allows for more room inside the case as well as the 120mm exhaust on the back of the case, though the gTower is slightly wider than a normal case already. The motherboard is secured with standard brass standoffs, except for the bottom three holes. They mount with plastic barbs. This makes initial installation easy, since only a little bit of force is necessary to secure the motherboard; removal is difficult because needle-nosed pliers are needed to squeeze the barbs.
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Power supply installation is simple for a unit that lacks a dual fan configuration. For those with a bottom exhaust (e.g. Enermax) installation is a bit more difficult. Cooltechnica has slightly modified the case from AMS’ original design by drilling additional holes into the power supply backplate to circumvent AMS’ solution for dual-fanned units, mounting it upside down; and removing material from the power supply area to accommodate the fan grille. My dual fanned Enermax fit perfectly, though it was necessary to remove the fan grille prior to installation and replaced after, whereas my Turbolink needed one of the fan grille screws to be permanently removed before it would fit.
Because the front bezel is thin, the bay covers clips onto the drive cage itself, not onto the bezel. Again, much the same way a Lian Li case works. The bay covers themselves are made of aluminum. To remove them, a flat head screwdriver is needed to push them out of place. Perhaps not as easy as the standard clip-in plastic ones, but not much harder. Drives simply mount with a set of screws. However, hard drives must be mounted into the lower removable rack because the bay covers (remember they clip directly onto the drive cage) take up the needed room for a proper installation. The removable rack, is secured with a set of four thumbscrews, and comes out quite easily.
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Installation of the front access ports and ATX switches was simple. Both the USB and audio jacks use pins on the motherboard whereas the Firewire (iLink) uses a pass through connector.
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