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welcome to my unboxing and first look at

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what should be fairly evident based on the outside of the box this is the half

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XB from Cooler Master which is a continuation of the ever popular half

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Series so it started with the half 932

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which was an ATX mid tower that offered

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extreme airf flow for the price and for

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the form factor I mean the whole thing was basically like mesh and fans and

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making sure that all your system components stayed cool then we saw the

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lower cost half 922 then I believe we saw the half X then the half

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912 now we have a half Cube case now

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Cube cases are more common with some of

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these sort of bouquey case guys like we've seen a cube from uh Le and Lee

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we've seen cubes from Mountain mods and case Labs over the years uh but most of

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the mainstream guys don't really do cubes so I'm really excited to see what

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sort of a a more experienced Casemaker

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like Cooler Master can do with this form

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factor the cube form factor is sort of unique because what it does do is it

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gives a lot of room that you normally don't find in an enclosure above and

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potentially below the motherboard because the motherboard

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usually takes up a lot of space inside the case not because it is actually

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physically large I mean a motherboard is thin but it takes up a lot of space

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inside the chassis because you can't really put anything over top of it it's

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it's just sort of it's sort of full so what you can do by lying the motherboard

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down flat is you can get access to sort of unique ways to use the space so first

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we see the packing material so you got a little about an inch and then a little

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more than an inch on the sides and I mean honestly for a pretty this is

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pretty light case considering its size and the steel construction it feels very

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very sturdy like you could probably yeah just put all your weight on this thing I

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mean like I said an experienced Casemaker like Cooler Master you don't

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expect them to make any new bearers like it being kind of flimsy like you see

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with mountain mods enclosures although those are all aluminum which is harder

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to make more rugged and more strong so the first thing we're going to do is get

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all these panels unscrewed actually not quite all of them cuz I want to show you the outside first so on the side you

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find ventilation you expect that from a half series enclosure you also find

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Handy Dandy handles that can be used for carrying the case around and you can use

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to maneuver it quite easily these are not levers so you don't pull up on these

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to open up the side panel the side panel is removed by removing the screws and

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then sliding it back so those are just for air flow and for handling the case

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the other side is identical same thing you got handles you got airflow holes so

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nothing that you haven't seen before like 10 seconds ago all right on the

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back we got a 120 mil fan more ventilation again as we've come to

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expect 2 80 mil fans standard 7 PCI

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slots as well as what appears to be a cable tie um and a protruded power

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supply mounting cage so what that does is that gives us more room inside the

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case for things like cable management cuz remember your power supply is going

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to be like this long and then you're going to have a bunch of more space on

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the end for where the cables need to come out so by doing this case

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manufacturers instead of making their entire chassis another inch deeper can

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just protrude the power supply a little bit and I guess sort sort of cheat give

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you a smaller enclosure that way with just a little bit of a bump out the back

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in the top you see what appears to be a 200 mm fan mounting uh fan mounting

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spacing with rubber grommets and what is a very see-through mesh so while I like

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to see Windows to see into my chassis and see what you know the cool Le stuff

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that I put in there I don't mind a thin mesh like this because you can as you

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can here as you can see you can see through it quite clearly so you'll get a

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very good aesthetic even though it's not using a window on the front of the case

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we've got two 120 mm fans with more mesh

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two 5 and 1/4 in Bay two hot swap 3 and

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1/2 in Drive sleds which are really cool because here check this out they're

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compatible with 3 and 1/2 in or 2 and 1/2 in so this is that standard

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rubberized uh grommet Mount thing that we've seen with Cooler Master in the

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past you can put a 2 and 1 half inch Drive in using these holes more

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ventilation on the drive cage itself and instead of bending it like we used to

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you actually just slide it open and then clip it into place just like that with a

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drive on it this allows it to be a lot more sturdy whereas on those other ones

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like I know I've commented on this a lot in the past where I say yeah it looks

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really flimsy once you put a drive in it it's okay now I no longer have to say

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that it just doesn't look flimsy and once you put a drive in it it should be

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that much that much more okay so those

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lock into place quite nicely you've also got your front power reset uh indic uh

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excuse me power LED you've got hold on

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nope Power LED is the illuminated button here that's your hard drive activity LED

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microphone headphone and two USB 3 ports

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USB 3 is finally standard on pretty much

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every single new case which is great I

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remember it was so frustrating for so long uh you know half the chassis didn't

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have USB 3 the other half of them had it but with a pass through that plugged

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into the back of your motherboard so in order to put together your half XP

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you're going to want to oh look at that wow considering the price of this case

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that is a very very solid side panel I mean that's the thing again guys like

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Cooler Master they do not screw around when it comes to the overall build

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quality of the case so even though it's pretty light it's not like they're using

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lightweight material I mean look at this they've punched out most of this panel

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but it still has only this much Flex to it and I'm putting a lot of force on it

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you can see from yeah no still good yeah you can see

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how much force I'm putting on it it does not Bend at all extremely rigid love to

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see that because it just means that there's going to be less strain on the

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components if anything does happen if you're shipping the system which is a

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concern if you're a system builder like NC you know you look at it and you go oh

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well you know H that's going to put a lot of strain on the motherboard when

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that when that case flexes like that not going to have that happen with a

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well-built chassis so in terms of uh included accessories you've got tons of

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cable management ties this is way more than I'm used to seeing with a case you

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have a whole whack load of 2 and 1/2 in Drive sleds and I'll show you where

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these go in a minute included speaker as well as all the screws you'll need to

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assemble your system so once we get inside let's start on this side check

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this out dedicated 2 and 1/2 in Drive mounting so with those two front hot

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swaps you can mount up to six ssds in this case completely natively all you do

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is throw your ssds in the little rails slide them in and it's pretty much what

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you're used to seeing in terms of hard drive mounting except it's an entire

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dedicated 2 and 1/2 in cage and again extremely wellb built at the back of the

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case remember those 2 80 mil fans those are going to be directly cooling your

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your ssds here and honestly I probably

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wouldn't install anything here I just use them as passive airf flow the 5 and

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1/4 in bays are completely toolless so you open them up lock them just like

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that and you can remove them very easily and this is a design we've seen on the

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half series before just by uh folding

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back these little tabs which don't even look like a tab they're very well

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integrated into the aesthetic design or the case which is very industrial and

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then you use the toolless mounting in order to throw your 5 and a/4 in drive

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in there lots of space at the back for longer Optical drives and cable

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management speaking of cable management there are tons of cable management

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options in this case check this out Cable Management Loops here I love these

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things they're awesome they help you keep things tidy look at all the cable

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management Loops that they've popped into the bottom here so you can see

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those here all the cables that need to run even like they've even put in

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dedicated Cable Management Loops for these fans at the back so you can go

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cable here tie it down here tie it down there and get everything over to the

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power supply area where you can see more cable management Loops more cable

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management Loops the inter for the hot

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swap 3 and A4 3 and 1/2 in Drive Bay in the front so single Molex power then you

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run two SATA data cables in order to activate those you've got noise

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dampening foam so this is under the power supply as well as a removable

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filter that goes under the power supply itself they've also lifted the power

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supply up a little bit and I'm glad to see that because I recently had a power

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supply die in uh in an older defin R2

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case from fractal this was totally my bad but what I did is I put a 120 mm fan

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power supply in it fan down and then I put the case onto a carpeted area yeah

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that thing died it totally starved from airf flow I didn't even think about it

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as I was kind of throwing it under a desk and not thinking I was using it as a file server so this would have saved

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my power supply right here cuz even though it wouldn't have been optimal it

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would have been able to grab some air from the inside of the case by bringing

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it up S through these gaps so it wouldn't have completely suffocated so

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that yeah would have saved my bacon let's move up into the top of the

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chassis where we find a couple cool things so number one is the removable

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motherboard tray which you can take off just by removing four screws here and

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lifting the whole motherboard tray out that'll make it easier to Cable manage

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the bottom of the case as well as you know install all your components outside

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of the case and then put them in personally I'd probably try and do it

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without it because yeah my my hands are pretty small but I can handle it if you

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have larger hands though that could be a boon for you huge CPU cutouts so you'll

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have no problems installing the back plates of larger CPU coolers uh even

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when the even when everything is still in the chassis even when the motherboard

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is already installed on the motherboard tray you can see also that those front

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120 mm fans also have 140 mm fan mounts

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and the spacing looks right for a radiator which is outstanding because

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you could put a dual 120 mm radiator here looks like you could pretty easily

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fit ah yes you could easily fit another

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120 mm radiator here that looks like enough spacing so you could have at

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least a triple triple radiator water cooling setup in here with no problems

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at all Aesthetics are awesome I mean if you're going to have that nice loose

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mesh on the top so you can see everything inside the case then you

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better make sure you're including things with black cables so black cabled fans

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that are either either three pin or Molex another black cabled fan and all

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black cables for the front panel connectors including the uh audio the uh

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Power the and the LEDs the USB 3 as well

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as yeah that's pretty much it hold on a sec guys here's something cool guys

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check this out with a little bit of modding you could install a seven a

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seven PCI slot motherboard but you could install a dual slot card in the very

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bottom this is a big deal if you want to do sort of massive SLI configurations as

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some boards don't have the correct spacing uh to put your last dual slot

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card here because it just doesn't really work that way so check this out you can

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put it here and then all you'd have to do is where you see you can put your

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side panel on you can see the card's going to get lots of ventilation through these holes right over here so no

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problems there so all you'd have to do is in order to use the uh rear exhaust

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on your card potentially if you have a rear exhaust card is I'd probably you

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know Dremel some holes kind of here so that you can uh you can get access to

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that air flow so very cool stuff the Crazy Russian spotted that he's guest

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helping me uh film today so kudos to him

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for uh for noticing that that's awesome and I think that actually pretty much

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covers it I just want to show you guys yet more cable management uh Loops right

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here and here above the 5 and 1/4 in and the 3 and 1/2 inch cages I guess if I

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had one thing to caution you guys about before buying this case is make sure

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that you have an external storage solution because it only really supports

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two 3 and 1/2 in drives other than that this guy is completely ready for SSD

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more than anything else thank you for checking out my unboxing first look at

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the half XP from Cooler Master don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech tips

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from boxing's reviews and other computer

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videos here's something I didn't notice until we were putting the case back

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together but check this out so those super sturdy plastic handles I showed

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you on the outside are actually reinforced by this piece of metal here

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that's part of why they're so strong and they're not going anywhere because

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you're picking up the chassis by the actual chassis not by a piece of plastic

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that's attached to the side panel which is attached to the chassis good stuff

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again just great design choices overall on this case