Overview cont.

Inside:

Here are shots of the inside of the case - both left and right sides with the panels removed.

As you can see, there's plenty of room for drives. There are a total of 11 drive bays inside this tower with 6 of the bays accessible from the exterior. The remaining interior bays are all for 3.5" drives. Here are interior shots of the drive bays:

Behind the lower rack of hard drives lies the 120mm case fan. This is an intake fan which will bring cool air into the case from the outside world. The case fan placement is perfect since the fan can now cool the hard drives as well as the system as a whole.

There are two separate 3.5" drive cages - one in the midsection and one on the lower half of the case - both of which are removable. The cage in the midsection is meant for anyone needing exterior access while the lower cage is for internal drives.

Installing 5.25" drives is as simple as putting guide rails on the devices and then sliding the devices into the drive bays.Installing internal 3.5" inch drives involves using supplied thumbscrews to secure the drive itself.

Here is a shot of the inside top of the case. You'll notice the cables running down from the I/O ports on the roof.

Let's spend some time on the motherboard. Thermaltake claims to support Extended ATX motherboards with this case but we must disagree. If you actually have an Extended ATX board (for dual processor systems), then really think twice about getting this case. We tried to install a Supermicro board in here and there was just no way the extended ATX board was going to fit in here. NO WAY .

With that said, the chassis will fit ATX and smaller motherboards without a problem. The Tsunami Dream does not have a removable motherboard tray which is a bummer - especially since this case is fairly expensive. Having a removable tray makes life so much easier when it comes to installing a motherboard - ask anyone who's ever used a removable tray and they will most certainly agree.

Finally - here are pictures of the rear case fan and the PCI slots. Notice the locks for the expansion cards.

That pretty much sums the interior of the chassis. Let's move on over to a test system setup.

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