Installation

The first thing to do is to remove the motherboard tray and pop in the correct motherboard stand offs for your mobo. Now use the provided screws and get everything fastened before returning the tray to its original position and tightening the two rear thumbscrews to keep the tray in place.

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Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Now pop in your add-in cards. You can use the card holding clips which have two notches which slot onto the PCB of the card. You then have to tighten the long thumbscrews which forces the clip against the card and holds it into place. While there is little point in using it on the X2600 which I installed, longer, heavier cards would make full use of this feature and would make transporting a much less dangerous adventure for your PC.

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Installing the power supply is easy too, and all you have to do is remove the four thumbscrews from the PSU shroud, fasten your PSU into place and slot it back it. Rear loading power supplies are much easier than trying to do it from inside the case.

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Click to enlarge

Now for the hard discs. If you aren’t planning to throw you PC around, then there is no need to remove the hard disc cage which looks like it would be an epic pain due to the several screws that hold it in place. Inside, all you have to do is grab the HDD screws and the rubber grommets, and screw them into you hard disc. Now you simply slot it into place. Done. If you do carry your PC around, then you can use more screws which physically attach the hard disc to the HDD cage.

Optical drives, or any 5.25” drive slots in the front of the case and you’ll need to grab your screw driver and use the provided screws to fasten them into place.

The front panel connectors are all marked as usual. The front I/O cables come from the top of the case and again are all labelled apart from the FireWire which is the odd one out. Unlike the PC-B20, there aren’t separate pins for oddly laid out plugs. This is actually an improvement as the USB/audio/FireWire header design is a standard, and so there is no need for the extra clutter.

Now you have to plumb all of the molex’s from all of the fans to your power supply, or take off the 3 pin to molex adaptors which are on all of the fans and attach them to your motherboard/fan controller.

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Testing

Due to the enormous height of the case, the standing test flaunted any health and safety rules but the PC-A71 achieved 3 out of 3 which means that it’s perfect to carry around to the latest LAN event. Together with the card holding clips and light-weight, this really is perfect for someone who wants to bring their PC to any event.

Unfortunately, the 120mm fans supplies with the case aren’t the quietest and it would be classed as quiet on our scale. Of course you can swap these fans out for your quieter brand.

Thanks to the ridiculous quantity of fans, your hard discs will notices the greatest drop in temperature as they are constantly bathed in external, cool air.