Antec Dark Fleet DF-85 Gaming Tower Computer Case Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
2,776 words · ~13 min read
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today we'll be doing an unboxing and overview of the antech dark Fleet df8
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this is a full tower chassis and uh why don't we do a quick overview of the
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features that it includes first of all you have a 2 and 1/2 in SSD slot right
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in the top of the drive this runs at your full SATA speed whatever you hook
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up to it so that's a pretty neat feature if you want to plug an SSD into the
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front of your case and then we've also got four external 3 and 1/2 in Fleet
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swap SATA drive Bays so these are hot swap SATA base that you can actually
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move around within the case much like the antech 1200 you can actually take
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the whole module and move it somewhere else if you want these except 3 and 1/2
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in drives and then we have Fleet release Drive Bay access does fleet release
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basically is a name for their door that
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includes a fan a fan control knob a stepless fan control knob so you can
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have the fan run at any speed you want as well as a fan filter this gives you
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access to the hard drive Bays as well as the fleet swap Bay B next we have USB
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3.0 on the front a single port and it is
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sssd hard drive compatible it is designed by antech and California and
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what else do we have on the outside of the box that I can tell you about
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there's a picture of the case I don't think that's all that relevant then
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we've got a big long list of specs cameraman if you want to just have a look at the spec list they can always
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pause it and have a look if they feel like it three front USB 2.0 ports that's
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probably relevant as well as the one USB 3.0 port color coded blue uh CPU cutout
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for easy CPU installation and oh it
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accepts CPX power supplies that's pretty relevant too cuz ANC cp850 and cp1000
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are both really good units at a really good price so let's get this thing
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opened up this is my cheat sheet today by the way because there's a lot of
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stuff to remember about this case and uh from time to time I do actually try to
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learn about the product before I unbox it rather than just trying to learn on
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camera look at this I I prepared everything today I've got got a knife
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I've got my screwdriver and I even have an SSD drive to put into the little SSD
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slot that is preparation so first thing
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we find inside the box is a piece of
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paper are you even able to hear me you can hear me okay so we find a piece of
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paper that tells us this is a product overview and we've also got some screws
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okay why don't we just open this up and see what's
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inside okay product overview will'll only provide general
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information uh shows you what all the where all the fans are and stuff and
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then yeah okay oh hey hey hey this is cool okay so there's an SSD Mount I'll
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show you that once we get inside the case and then next we have some hard
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drive grommets we got some thumb screws motherboard screws Drive screws as well
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as a couple reusable cable ties thank you antech cable ties are always a plus
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on a new case and I can't get this out so I'm going to use the old trick uh
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flip it upside down and there we
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go roll
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and wow it comes in really good foam I'll give it that
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much this is a high quality closed cell
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foam you can be assured that your antec DF 85 will not be damaged in transit
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you've got a good inch plus of packing material on all sides and you can see
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that it arrived in very good condition when it was uh shipped to
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ncx all right let's get the plastic off
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here and the first thing you'll notice is that it's pretty similar in structure
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to the antech 1200 so it's been upgraded in a lot of
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ways but the general shape is quite um
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reminds me quite a bit of the antech 1200 including the side window here so
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it does have a side window which has an optional 120 mm fan mount for a graphics
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card fan then we have a uh some thumb
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screws on the back so I'm just going to get this opened up so we can have a good
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look at it why don't we do the rest of the outside first so here I'll take that
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off then we'll take off the inside one in a little bit here but let's have a
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look at the fleet release as well as Fleet swap Bay
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so first of all these are the fleet rele
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oh man I can't even remember which is Fleet release and which is Fleet swap
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help me okay these are the fleet release Bay so these open up
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somehow okay let's see if we can figure out how to do it that would be the key
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is to figure out how to open them there
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has to be a way and it can't be all that complicated because you can't call
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something like Fleet like like fast like Swift unless you're okay well that was
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easy does this just come out like that no well these are easy so these are just
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covers for your 5 and 1/4 in Bays okay
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so there we go we've got that much figured out and then we have okay why
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don't I try try opening up the side panel first and see if I can figure out how to get these open so side panel has
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a nice Clear Window on it one of the things that they have updated since the
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1200 is this is no longer mesh this is now Plexi so you can actually see
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through the entire window you've got anti vibration mounts here for the side
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VGA fan so that's pretty good let's go
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ahead and put that in
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there there we go and let's see if we can figure out how to open up these Bays
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here so first let's take this and do
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that oh wonder what this does does that
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unlock them not yet oh okay oh it does it
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unlocks them oh there we go okay so all
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of the fleet release bays are locked by
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default and then you just open them up
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just like that I'm guessing they become a little bit easier to open as time goes
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on uh but yeah there that's not that
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complicated so now we have access to all
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of the of the fans these are washable fan filters in here 120 mm fans you can
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see these are antech 3speed fans they are LED fans so those are red LEDs on
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red fans with a black frame so they look pretty cool when they're lit up I'll
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make a point of actually lighting up this case uh at some point in the future
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so I can show it to you guys the other thing that ante is really touting as a
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cool feature on this case is the step fan control right here which is built in
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to all of the front fans and here is the
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other really really cool one and this is Fleet swap so right back here you have
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to look inside the case you can see that there are two only two I thought there
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were more well there are two front SATA
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hot swaps that you can actually move to
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any two SATA ports that you want in the front and there are actually Four I lied
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the other two are up here by default so you can move these around however you
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want actually cameraman if you want to hear come have a look at them from the
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inside you can see that the screws right here can allow you to just remove these
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they're made of plastic but fairly durable and then you can just put them
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wherever you want so you can configure it so that the hot swap bays are
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wherever you need them to be they all used separate power and data cables so
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there's no Port multiplier involved there's no uh there's no power uh
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routing from sort of one plug to multiple ports or anything like that but
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it does give you a very flexible very modular interface for your drives very
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cool let's have a look at what we've got for front panel connectors
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here okay oh it's tied with two zip ties
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for extra added Safety
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and Security okay so for our front panel
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connectors we have a USB 3 which is intended to go around to the back of
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your motherboard so that'll give you front USB 3 cuz the uh the pin out is
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not yet decided for the USB 3 standard so if you want a front USB 3 that's all
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you can really do is run it around to the back of the case so then the next
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thing we've got is our front USB 2.0 reset switch another front USB 2.0 then
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we have the front uh SATA which I will show you in a little bit more detail in
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a moment we have power for the front we have front HD audio we have front ac97
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audio should we so desire we have a hard drive LED and I'm going to go ahead and
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assume there's a power switch in there somewhere but I can't find it for the life of me power
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LED come on power
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switch okay we got this one this one this one
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and power switch got it excellent so at
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the back there are two more 120 mm fans these match the color scheme of the 120
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mm in the front so all in all actually
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that's one of the probably the best values about this case is the fact that
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it comes with seven fans by default all
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pre-loaded into the case and they're all reasonably good quality fans too these
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are all antech Tri cools I actually don't know if the one's up top or yeah
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yeah those are Tri cools too and so all the ones at the back are controlled by
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switches at the back of the case so if I can get the cameraman to come have a
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look at the back here you can see that the rear fans are controlled by these
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switches so they can be set to either low or high and these are sliders oo
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that's cool so you can adjust them to whatever speed you want by the look of
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things although I could be wrong so don't quote me on that one so it might
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just be low high uh that one's kind of
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recessed but you can probably still hit it the top ones are right here so that
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controls all the fans at the back now one disadvantage is that if you want to
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replace the fans with something else it might be a little tricky to get them to
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actually work this way here is our standard I/O plate location then we have
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1 2 3 4 5 6 seven expansion slots so
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you're going to fit standard ATX motherboards here are two water cooling
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grommet so if you wanted to mount a rear radiator or anything like that you'd run
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the tubes through there then you've got your standard ATX power supply hole and
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then you can also remove these four screws and that allows you to mount a
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CPX power supply let's have a look around the back of the case and see if
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we can find any interesting cable routing features or anything like that
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let me see cameraman's pointing at something I don't know what I don't know
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what he's on about he's pointing at the
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front 5 and 1/4 in Baye Maybe maybe he
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wants me to talk about the 5 and a/4 inch P oh I haven't forgotten that now he's pointing at something that I had
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totally hadn't forgotten he's trying to remind me of stuff that I know silly
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cameraman trickst are for kids now he's shaking his head at
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me that cameraman guy him in his Mac see
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he wouldn't use something like this because it's not you know an Apple so
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you know he doesn't understand that you know why this would be interesting uh so
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here's your power okay come back
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so here's your power power supply cable routing holes you've uh you got your
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power supply mounted in the bottom so you can run your 24 pin here you run
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your eight pin up here you run uh um
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whatever they're called Power connector SATA up here for the optical drives and
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then you can run any SATA cables you want over to your hard drives over here
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and then you can also oh you know what this is something else that I should mention I think that antech saying you
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can actually install another one of these if you you don't want any Optical
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drives and you can just have four fans in the front so I I don't know where you
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buy them but I think that you can so
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that might be relevant here's the CPU cutout nice and big but without losing
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any sturdiness you can see they've peeled back the metal here so that the
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edges are all rounded I could rub my fingers on these all day and I would not
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get a cut see I didn't get a cut I was hoping I wouldn't get a cut and then
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let's see the last thing that I want to talk about is the 140 mm fans on the top
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those look a little bit bigger than one I think they're 140 mil oh yeah they're
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140 mil no I'm I'm I'm just crazy yeah these are 140 mm fans Tri cools also
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they spin just like that and then the last thing that I finally want to show
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you is let's actually use the hot spot
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Bay I'm just going to take a wd 1 TB
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black hard drive and I'm going to plug it in and then that is how long it takes
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to install a hard drive in the dark Fleet 85 once you've already plugged in
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the connectors at the back of the fleet swap uh modular interface things that
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you can move around and finally the real last thing I want to show you because I
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lied last time so here's the power cable that comes up from the power supply and
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then here's a SATA cable that we plugged in in theory when we were installing our
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system and you can plug in it
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SSD now I don't know that this is the
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most secure way to install an SSD in your system but I will let you be the
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judge of that uh the way that I see this being more useful is actually just if
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you store your data on just a regular 2 and 1/2 in Notebook hard drive and you
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just want to sort of quickly plug it in instead of you know hauling out a USB
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cable or whatever then this would be a really easy way to plug that in or I
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mean hey if you wanted your like if you wanted your SSD on display for the world
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you know hey look at me look how cool I am I have a 128 gig SSD yo then it's all
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clear so you