The branding on the bottom of the front is again simple and classy. It’s almost the only branding on the case and this is nice because this is a panel that is crying out to be removed and modded:
The panel easily unclips and reveals a dust filter underneath:
Pushing the two top corners of the dust filter releases it to pivot out revealing included case fans underneath. Here one of the three included front fans was removed:
As can be seen the fan filters really do work and caught a decent amount of dust after nearly 6 months. The interesting thing is that the design allows and filters air from the sides which is good because the front panel will be limiting direct airflow from the front.
The side panel contains a slightly tinted acrylic window that is just a perfect balance to keep most people happy. It is not so dark that lighting is lost, however it’s not so clear that a dark room will have you blinded by the internals. Of course like most windows it can reflect things very well:
The side is divided into two sections. The large upper windowed portion is a seperate door that is opened by pressing a stealthy release button on the top of the rear of the case:
Depending on how stiff the fit of the door is, it may require a bit of work for the windowed door to open, on the other hand if it’s loose the door may simply fall open. So be careful!
The lower section on the other hand is not secured with a locking release but is instead held shut with a magnet. In order to pull it off the magnet there is a pop out little handle half way along. However this little plastic handle even when folded away really disrupts the simple clean lines of the case. Once the lower door is opened it can be seen that there is another included dust filter:
The lower chamber has room for two power supplies and radiators can mount on both sides of the chamber, which both have magnetic filters. The motherboard side of the case is similar with the large door panel (this time unwindowed) revealing the cable routing space, while the lower door reveals the same lower chamber where radiators, PSUs and HDDs can be mounted. The lower door on this side has the blank panel fitted. Both sides of the case have this fitted by default but it can be unscrewed to allow air to flow into radiators:
The space behind the motherboard is fairly deep, enabling plenty of power supply cables that might be needed for 2P or 4 way GPU setups to attach to extensions without bulging the side panels. There are copious options for cables and even tubing to come in and out from behind the tray and every one includes rubber grommets to not only protect the cables, but also screen it from being seen from the window. The large amount of grommetted holes means that any build will be kept tidy regardless of if it’s a normal ATX based build or a much larger HPTX build. The downside is that the area left to mount cylinder reservoir clamps is therefore limited as the motherboard plate is somewhat like swiss cheese.
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Great review. I have been looking for a long term review for the 900D. I have heard problems with production quality, like bits snapping off. But you give no mention of that so I’m assuming these are isolated incidents.
Hey Terry – Yes I haven’t seen problems in the long run with anything failing. Most complaints I’ve seen were things being delivered with something broken. There’s definitely improvements that can be made and corners that were cut to save costs, but for the non-msrp price it’s a great deal!
Like the 900D. But – 480 rads can be obstructing to the upper bay as the rad will intrude on optical drive lengths / area. For this reason I swapped over to a 420 up top. Plenty of room all round and leaving many other options open, so I would disagree on the 480 recommendation up top.
Had to remove the lower intake fan as well to accommodate the 480 which is 60mm deep as the rear chamber just impinged on the fan mounts – using Alphacool nexus 480 x 60 unit with the 420 x 60 up top. Also a 140mm below as well. This aside, a joy to work in but still not the same as my lianLi 2120 workstation unit. may well look at the boutique brigade next time..
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