I proceeded to clear all of the stuff out of the inside of the case. I then installed the basic drives needed for a working system. The CSX-7788KEB has room for 4 5.25″ drives, 2 floppy bays and 4 3.5″ drive bays below. That’s quite a bit of room for a mid-tower, so I doubt anyone will be running out of space with this thing. In installing the CD-ROM, I had to, of course, remove a drive bay cover. There are no thumb access holes in the front to remove the covers, a nice feature I’ve seen on some other cases. After you remove the drive bay cover, though, you will notice what gives the front of the case its look. They have taken a standard beige cover and covered it it in blue plastic. Drive installation was pretty straight-forward and there was plenty of room in the chassis to do the job.
Next, I installed the motherboard. This case has a removable motherboard mounting plate, a very convenient feature which I give any case brownie points for having. After removing the right side cover, you can simply grab the mounting plate and shift it forward to remove it from the chassis. This makes installing the motherboard very easy and gets around having to lower a board into a case. With cases like this, most of your money is going toward the lighting effects, so to have a removable mounting plate is icing on the cake. In installing the video card, you have to punch out a slot cover. This case uses the punch-out slot cover. Being the boring guy that I am, I personally like the screw-in covers better, but the punch-outs are indeed easier to use and quicker to take in and out.
The case has a lot of room for cooling fans, many of which are in use when you get the case. There is room for 5 80mm case fans: 2 in the rear, 2 in the front, and one on the side panel. There is also a 92mm top-mounted blow hole, and of course the standard fan on the rear of the power supply. The case came with two 80mm case fans bundled: the LED fan and the side-mounted blow-hole. It should be noted that the side-fan is mounted so as to sit right over the CPU, which creates an interesting situation where you have the side fan and the CPU fan both pulling air in opposite directions. The top 92mm fan comes pre-installed and comes with a pass-thru connector.
A real nice feature of this case is the included power supply. The unit bundled with this case is a 350W Q-Max power supply. Its a pretty solid power supply and performs very well under the load of a bunch of hardware and all the lighting. I did not really load the system up, though. The PSU comes with 5 leads for your standard drives and lighting, two small floppy power leads, AUX connectors for the P4 and, of course, the 20-pin ATX power connector. This PSU is quite easy on the ears, which is quite nice. Also, being that it is a bundled PSU, the power cables are just about the right length for this particular case. So, you won’t find yourself having to bundle up huge amounts of excess wiring just to keep it out of the fans. In all, this is a pretty nice PSU, and considering the price of this case ($55), its a hell of a deal to see it in there.
Another nice practical feature of the case is the front I/O ports. At the bottom of the bezel is a small fold-down flap, beneath which are 2 USB ports, a headphone jack and a microphone jack. There is a place for a Firewire connector, but interestingly, it was filled in.
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