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so today we have an exciting new product to talk about this is The Cooler Master

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half X and um really this comes down to

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a complaint that I've had for quite a while with uh EVGA and their overly long

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motherboards they've been releasing motherboards like their classified

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fourway SLI their new sr2 uh super

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record 2 dual slot or sorry dual socket

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um LGA 1366 motherboard they've been

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releasing motherboards with too many PCI slots they're actually longer than a

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standard case which is seven PCI slots now the half X fixes that complaint that

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I've had that they're releasing these motherboards that there are no cases for

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well now we have a case for it so let's have a look at the overall specs of this

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before we take it out of the box it is a black case it is made of steel and

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plastic uh there's a bunch of boring stuff now something that they have seem

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to forgotten here is that it is Micro ATX ATX eatx and it is also something

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called XL ATX which is kind of a an ATX that is

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too long because if we come down here PCI slots nine so rather than having a

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standard seven PCI slots this case can

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accept either motherboards with eight slots and then an overhanging dual slot

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card in the bottom slot or even a motherboard with nine PCI slots so two

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nine uh two too long like the classified four-way okay so cooling system this is

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probably relevant included we have a 230

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mm red LED fan at the front a 200 two

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200 mm fans at the top and oh one is optional okay so only one a 200 mm fan

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at the side and a 140 mm fan at the rear there's apparently also a 120 mm

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fan which is a VGA fan cover and then a VGA holder has an optional 80mm fan so

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one of the big features of the half X is actually also that it is firmy ready so

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it is ready for NVIDIA's latest GTX 470

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and 480 graphics cards that means it has

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really good GPU cooling that kind kind of goes without saying okay we got an

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installation guide here so this is going to tell you how to install your

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components in the uh system I'll actually just let you read that you can

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freeze the frame if you want to figure out oh this is neat USB 3.0 converting

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to USB 2.0 C I'm sure they mean cable

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but that's a that's a pretty useful thing to know how to do how to install the VGA bracket okay we can kind of

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refer to this a little bit later and then uh let's get the case out let's

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have a look at it the first thing I noticed about it is that it is black

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black everywhere black on the inside black on the back black on the top on

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the front very nice that is what I like to see for almost any case these days is

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a nice black interior as with a black

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exterior black goes with everything it's the New Black we got a plane flying

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overhead so I don't know how well you're going to be able to hear me but let's

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get all these plastic bits off and have a look at this case so cooler Master's

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half line of cases is all about half high air flow so we'll start at the

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front the entire front of the case is

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covered in grills so all of this is potentially if you've got a lot of

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exhaust going to be a passive intake and

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then down here we have I'm just going to use this as a cheat she at the front we

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have our two 130 mm red LED fan up at

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the front we've got all of our front connectivity so they've got everything

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here we have USB 3.0 super speed which

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you can convert to extra USB 2.0 ports we've got eat fire wire USB 2.0 as well

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as front audio so it has everything and then this panel actually looks like you

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might even be able to remove it and mount something else there oh maybe not

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okay here we've got a little slider okay so that has your o fan LED button that's

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pretty cool then a reset switch as well as a power switch so those can all be um

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safely hidden for whatever reason just kind of kind of cool to have little

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things that slide around on the case like that okay the overall build of the

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thing actually I'm just going to kind of see what I think of

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it as soon as you fill up a case like this it's going to be really heavy but

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it's also very very solid like you could easily put all of my weight on it even

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when it's empty and even though it has has plastic to the construction because

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you can see the way that they've constructed the plastic is very rugged

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it's very reinforced and it also has kind of a cool look to it it's along the

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visual stylings of previous half cases

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but it doesn't take everything out of their book either so let's take the side

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panel off side panel fit and finish is pretty good let me just kind of put it

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back on and see what I think of that because it's not perfect by any means

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but yeah it gets in there pretty good so you can see even when we take it off and

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put it back on there are no unnecessary gaps in the case everything fits in

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really nice that's something hey you can't actually take it for granted so

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you just pull it away pull it out there we go let's have a look at the inside

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here that is a hardcore looking fan and ducked right there so besides the window

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we've got this huge Grill which you can actually remove the fan from but still

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leave the grill on so it'll still look pretty cool and you can actually remove

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this duct from the fan as well if you don't want that but this fan is designed

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to send as much air flow over the graphics cards as is um humanly or fanly

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possible you can see it can plug in either using a three pin connector or

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you can use the included four pin Molex adapter so we can go ahead and uh file

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this side panel away and have a look at some more aspects of this case the

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interior once again it borrows a lot from previous half cases so we've got

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cooler Masters 3 and 1/2 in in or rather this one has an SSD adapter already

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included in it but I'm assuming yeah you can take that out so they're 3 and 1/2

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in Drive Bays uh now these look really flimsy but as soon as you install a hard

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drive in them they're really really sturdy so I I love their hard drive

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mounting system personally and then they've also gone and included a 2 and

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1/2 in adapter so if you have an SSD boot drive just right out of the box you

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can put a couple screws in it slide that into their convenient tooless system and

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clip it in awesome so it takes up to 1 2 3 4 5 3 and 1/2 in Bays here and then

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what appears to be a hot swap module in

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the front but why don't we'll have a closer look at that later actually I

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just want to have a look at the overall layout of the Interior first so down

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here this is the oh they've got a little cool design by Cooler Master stamp on

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here this is going to hold your power supply all right so your power supply it

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goes into the bottom of this case and they don't have an option for a top mount which I don't think really matters

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you got little rubber um here where's my

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knife see I actually have a knife today check that out all right so why don't we

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sort of figure out how this works by removing this okay oh yeah this

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is interesting this is the duct for the

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NVIDIA fmy graphics cards this is part of what makes it fmy ready because

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you're ducting dedicated airflow to the

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graphics cards using like kind of a segmented uh Zone cooling Paradigm that

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we first saw with the antech p180 okay but you can actually remove this if you

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don't want it if you don't like it you can just pull it out just like that it's

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only two thumb screws so it's no big deal okay so then I'm going to now that

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I've removed that I'm going to go ahead and remove my power supply bracket here

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because honestly in a build that I'm doing I probably won't use any of this

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stuff so while something like this power supply cover is great if you're not

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using a modular power supply because you can hide all the wires behind it if you

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are using a modular power supply you're probably just going to pull it out

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anyway but I mean hey they think of everything right so this box is probably

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all of our accessories that's strapped in just like that you can see the way

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they've positioned the uh the cooling holes here there aren't actually any fan

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mounts on them but the reason for that is that they just wanted to have a nice

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open well supported place to put your

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power supply so even if you have one of those ridiculously long power supplies I

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mean they can be up to this long you will have proper little rubber supports

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for it you'll have your four screws at the back and you'll have the right ventilation spacing no matter where the

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fan on your power supply is so that's pretty cool as well and let's see what

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else I want to talk about in the interior here right right why don't we

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just kind of cut right to the chase here here it is this is 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 nine

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PCI slots and here's an interesting thing there's actually room for another

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slot right here so even if you have a nine slot motherboard you can even put a

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dual slot card in the last one and you're still not going to interfere with

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your power supply and there's going to be a spot to rest the card right in the

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case there so that's pretty crazy okay

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then we've also got the cutout for the CPU Cooler nice big cutout so pretty

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much no matter where your CPU is positioned you're going to be able to

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access the back plate we've got our 140mm fan at the back we've got water

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cooling grommets here in case you wanted to do an external water cooling system

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now up at the Top This is a little bit of a disappointment but the first one

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I've had about this case I don't actually see a convenient place to mount

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a radiator but that may just be because

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I'm not uh I don't have a radiator here

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to kind of line up against it because something that I do see is that there

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are a lot of sort of extraneous looking

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mounting points in here so it's quite possible that they do have the holes

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there but I'm not seeing them so uh I

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wish yeah I wish I had a radiator to try it but I don't have one on me

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unfortunately there we go I just undid the other panel so let's have a quick

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look at that on the inside we've got a bit of a sort of textured thing going on

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here now this is a smart thing that they've done you see how this panel is

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not flat there's actually quite a bit of

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Bulge and rather than just sort of having this be flat and working the

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texture into this side what they've actually done is they've given you more

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room at the back of the motherboard tray

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to Route all of your cables so with this kind of depth you can you can route all

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of your PCI Express cables behind the video cards and then with this slightly

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less depth you can do the few cables required for the eight pin around the

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back of the motherboard and your 24 pin so that's a really smart thing that

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they've worked right into the case they've made it look like just a design

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element but it's there for a very practical reason so that brings us

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around to the back where we've got oh These are nice actually we've got really

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really soft rubber grommets to to mount all of our power or to mount to Route

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all of our power supply cables through so these are the kind that even if you

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have a cable sticking through it and and butting up against it it's still going

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to snap right back to its original place we have a nice big hole at the bottom

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cuz I mean in theory you're routing as many as eight PCI Express connectors

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through this a 24 pin an eight pin up to the back you're mounting like you're

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putting tons and tons of cables in here so it's great that they have a nice big

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hole for that okay we've got our five 5 and a/4 in rather 6 5 and 1/4 in Bay

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these are all standard tooled Affairs but personally I don't mind that some

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people will complain that they're not tlist but I mean oh they are Tess four

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four of them are Tess my bad and then the other two actually have the hot swap

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module mounted in them now I wish I could figure out how that works because

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it h you know it may not actually be hot

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swap it might just be like a a back plane thing although it looks like hot

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swap there's there's got a be a way to do this so just bear with me here I

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apologize for trying to figure this out on camera but

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uh no I don't really I do this all the time okay let me just take off the front

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bezel and see what we can see what we can Discover at the back

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here or at the front rather behind the front there that's what I meant to

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say okay H this is interesting I wonder if

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you actually have to take off the top as

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well as the front and uh cameraman's complaining to

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me about how long this video is so I guess we can wrap it up at some point

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well you know what I'll find out how those work and then I'll upload an

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annotation never mind I got it I got it there we go yes they are hot SWAT

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Bays so I figured out how they work hold on let me pop the front bezel back in

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okay so you just take these two clips at either side push them in pull it out all

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you do is screw your drive in it'll accept 2 and 1/2 in or 3 and 1/2 in

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drives you can see into the back plane there so it accepts up to two drives so

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that brings the 3 and 1/2 in drive capacity up to a potential of 7 as well

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as the 2 and 1/2 in drive capacity by default with this case up to three let's

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me see what else I want to still cover

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um what else do we got we talked about XL so our camera cut off no big deal

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let's have a look at the front panel connectors here's our two USB 3.0

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connectors and then so these are there's

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there's a guide in the uh in the users manual for how to convert them to USB

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2.0 so uh yeah I'm guessing there will be some way to do that we've got HD

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audio we've got a hard drive LED we've got our sort of standard power switch

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power LED reset switch all of those we've got our eSATA connection then we

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have our regular USB 2.0 front header

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and then we have our fire wire front header so no matter how what connectivity options your motherboard

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has you are going to be able to hook it up in this case uh just wanted to

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quickly show the tooless mechanism for the 5 and a/4 inch Bay you just press

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the button it locks in the drive you press it again it unlocks the drive very straightforward okay now one thing that

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I totally forgot about while I was doing the last segment was the included

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accessories so what do we have in here oh we got wheels hey hey they really did

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think of everything with this case cuz I mean one of the things I said was oh

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it's kind of heavy there you go they put wheels on it oh here here we go

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so here's how to adapt the USB 3.0 cables to USB 2.0 headers all you do is

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this you plug this in here hide it somewhere in all of the oh no that

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doesn't work okay I have no idea interesting you know what I bet I can

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figure it out I bet it's not too hard I'm willing to Y yep I'm willing to

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wager that at the front of the case there's actually ports that you plug

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these into and then you just run a regular USB 2.0 header very nice

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okay we have an8 pin extension cable like I said they thought of everything

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because a lot of motherboard or a lot of power supplies aren't going to have a

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long enough eight pin to account for those extra two slots of height so there

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you go they include one and this I think

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is something to do with the graphics card uh duct I believe it supports the

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graphics cards unless you're shipping the system around is probably not a big

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deal but I think it kind of goes in like that or something okay and then last but

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not least we have a big baggie of screws mostly black screws all the ones you're

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going to see are black nice little finishing touches like that black zip

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ties as well as a little speaker you can attached to your motherboard for Di

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diagnostic purposes thank you for checking out my unboxing of The Cooler

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Master half X and don't forget to subscribe