now the name of this case lends itself to some pretty obvious jokes and just
like Logan I'm going to go for the most obvious
one hey look I'm a Hadron Collider so
when we open up the case the first thing we find is an accessory box which
contains H yes a power cable because this is a high-end case with an
integrated power supply more on that later we've also got a manual whoa and
whatever I threw over there I believe that's an EVGA case badge and finally oh
cool we have some little like cable management clips and some screws for
mounting a 5 and 1/4 in Slimline optical
drive as well as a 3 and 1/2 in/ 2 1/2
in sled and some SATA cables and finally
like a hadron tattoo stickery thing next up we've got ah very nice packaging nice
construction paper I mean cardboard whatever this stuff's called on the
outside and then some nice Clos cell soft foam to keep it nice and safe while
it's being transported and then finally okay well we're going to have to
take marks off for that their uh you know protective you know paper around
the outside of the Hadron isn't very strong actually we're not going to take any marks off of that whatsoever because
it is extremely well packaged which is very unusual for a new casee
manufacturer because this is evga's first computer case they've done lots of
other computer hardware over the years but never a chassis before couple of
small Corrections there guys yes that was a case badge that I threw all the
way across the room and this is for the Slimline slot loading opticle which
isn't necessarily 5 and a/4 inch it's just a slim line slot loading opticle
and it goes right about here so on the right hand Edge we've got the spot for
that as well as a headphone and microphone Jack and two USB 3.0 ports
we've also got perforations along the bottom edge of the case perforations
along the entire bottom of the case as well as a nice little rubber foot at the
back and then a larger more raised metal
piece at the front that actually gives it a bit of a like an upward tilted
posture once the case is actually put down on the desk then on the left hand
side we've got a full side panel window that will reveal the unexceptional cable
management characteristics of this particular case only this side panel
comes off at all and in fact the other side panel doesn't so all of your cable
management will be done with zip ties and just trying to keep things you know
out of the way of each other as much as you possibly can moving on to the top of
the case the entire top of the case is again perforated and if there's anything
EVGA understands it's the need for air flow to cool the other components in
your system particularly modern hot running graphics cards so we're going to
go ahead and reveal that under that perforation which unfortunately doesn't
have dust filters although it doesn't make that much of a difference to me if
you're using it for exhaust ah yes two 120 mm fans that are able to take air in
from the bottom of the case which is where I showed you before there's lots
of ventilation lots of perforation and then exhaust it out the top of the case
I actually quite like this design the case overall feels solid without feeling
heavy and this is something that again is unusual for a firsttime case maker um
you know you usually expect them to cheap out on things like packaging not
understanding the importance or cheap out on the construction and the metal quality and that hasn't happened here at
all at the back of the case we've got two tubing holes if you wanted to run
external water cooling as well as two PCI slots where you can have a single
expansion card and it'll be dual slot cuz it's a graphics card and then you're
pretty much good to go finally we end up here yes the power supply that I
mentioned before 80 plus gold
efficiency slim power supply with a 500
watt capacity this is what has enabled EVGA to achieve this extremely unique
form factor here because unlike Silverstone approach which is usually to
go with sfx the slim power supply allows
them to really control the vertical height of the case in fact it's only
about 12 in by 12 in by 6 in wide so
we're going to go ahead and open it up and discover something that has bothered a lot of other reviewers but I
personally give exactly zero cares about and that is the fact that the power
powder coating doesn't extend to the inside in all places you can see that
there are places where it is actually visible that there's there's bare metal
here these are things that you will never see especially once you actually
have a system installed in the case and it's the kind of thing that I really
tend to not stress out about very much at all once we're inside we can also
find all of the well things that are
inside so the inside features I'm going to start with the thing that is
devastating and terrible to me and then we'll move on to the things that I think
are great and that is this right here there's no CPU cutout and instead EVGA
has opted for their own proprietary layout that's going to be compatible
with their own mitx motherboards which quite frankly not a whole lot of people
are using so I really would have rather seen the other side panel open up and I
would have rather had the flexibility to install a cooler from the back there's
actually a fair amount of room in the case for a decent sized Tower cooler
although you won't be putting something like an NHD 14 in here for Drive
mounting options we have these two caddies which are capable of holding
either a 2 and 1/2 in or a 3 and 1/2 in drive if you got creative you could pull
these out and you could probably cram a whole wack ton of SATA 2 and 1 half in
drives in there and then this third slot right here is for that Slimline optical
drive moving on down we've got the front
panel I/O connector so there's USB 3 I would have loved to see a black cable
for this but I do like that it's flat it's a ribbon cable as well as HD audio
and power switch and power LED there is no reset switch and there is no dve
Drive activity LED on this particular chassis followed by the power supply
wires so these I guess the benefit of having a custom power supply built just
for your case is that you can have all the wire lengths make sense so that the
cables can be easily managed so the 24 pin for example looks like it can be
easily chucked over here you can run some twist ties through all these
perforations on the drive cage here again another Smart Touch from EVGA
enabling lots of of passive air flow to be drawn over the Drives By these fans
as well as the active air flow right up here just absolutely love that and uh so
you can sort of cable tie that to that and put that where it needs to go and
then you look by contrast at the graphics card harness which is extremely
short and obviously designed to just plug directly into an up to 10 1 12 inch
graphics card right here and you can see that they've thought it out quite
carefully SATA connectors they provide only two because in theory you can only
really have two SATA drives in the system but then they give you four more
auxiliary standard four pin moxes so you can adapt those to whatever else you
happen to need depending on what you are doing with the case so overall what
would I say about this it's a great first try in fact it's a good case great
first try though they've missed a couple small things I mean I think the powder
coating issue that other reviewers have complained about is one thing missing
the CPU cutout is another for me but they've also really nailed a few things
like the overall build quality the quality of the packaging so your system
is going to arrive in one piece if you have something pre-built with this or
even your case is going to arrive in one piece if you order one as well as the
inclusion of an extremely highquality power supply that can handle any mitx
system that you can put in here plus something like a GTX 780 Ti without any
trouble I think they've got a lot going for the hron air thank you for checking
out my unboxing and overview of the hadra air from EVGA don't forget to
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