NZXT Tempest 410 Elite Gaming Computer Case Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
3,114 words · ~15 min read
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welcome to my unboxing and first look at the Tempest 410 Elite so the elite
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version has a side panel window this is a crafted mid Tower according to
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NZXT and what do we have to say for ourselves on the front so it has a
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2-year warranty although that's pretty much completely irrelevant because if a
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case isn't DOA it probably will maintain its core functionality over the course
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of lifetime um I I guess maybe the fans
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might matter okay they've speced out their clearances they've speed out the
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cooling what's included what's not included Bas and expansion so seven
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expansion slots so this is a standard ATX case on the back let's see what NZXT
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blurb is I always enjoy these blurbs an
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aggressive cooling solution forged for your rig The Tempest 410 Elite mid Tower
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completes your fine-tuned machine by taking advantage of the airflow required
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for the Enthusiast over clocking needs the Tempest Legacy expands its maximized
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ventilation through the extra- large honeycomb mesh design so my
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understanding is this case actually uses honeycomb mesh for all of its openings
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that are designed for airf flow that's kind of neat gives you a better air flow
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cool dual radiator support and dual touch powered front fans oh okay I lost
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where I was in the sentence there it's okay in addition to the basics the elite
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includes USB 3 and an acrylic side panel for interior viewing if you're looking
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for a new Cooling for your gameplay The Tempest 410 will bring you the results
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of epic win well all right
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then I am going to go ahead and break
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the seals on this epic win result and we
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will have a look at this case and see what we think of
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it so let's go ahead and open it
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up all right oh man it's like heavy I've done a
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few case unboxings here and I'm like getting warm so just going to go ahead
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and get rid of that before I start like sweating all over the camera here okay
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we've got our packing materials these are very very thick um the real wow
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these are very very stiff very thick
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foam so look at that they've actually see this is the kind of consideration
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that I really like to see check this out so you got kind of Standard 1 in on the
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sides you got kind of thin on the front Okay why did they do that I'll show you
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why they did that because they thickened it up at the back to
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prevent wait or did they thicken it up at the
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front Okay why did they thicken it up at the front oh cuz it's smaller H well all
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right then no but here's something they have
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done is they recessed the screws so many
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companies forget to do this that's what I was looking at when I was thinking of
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that they put a recess into see here you
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can see the same thing at the bottom so even though it uses a stick
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foam the screws are not going to break
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it I've seen so many cases come with broken packing materials due to the
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screws pressing into it and cracking the foam as soon as this foam is cracked it
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loses its structural Integrity because it's not a closed cell foam which you'll
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see in the higher end cases it is a like
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more of a stiff a hard foam so what happens is as soon as it's cracked it's
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pretty much useless um it's designed like a helmet for one
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Major Impact and then beyond that uh you
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don't expect too much this actually looks really nice it has a good overall
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feel to it good weight so it's not super light but it's not super heavy and very
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very sort of okay it's not clean lines
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because it's more of a gaming styled case as we've come to expect from NZXT
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but it's not over the top either to the
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point where it's very polarizing like um
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like some of their competitors gaming lines of cases where people either love
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them or they just hate the look of them I don't think there's anything to really
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hate about the look of this case so why don't we start with the front so on the
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front we find lots of honeycomb mesh so you can see this not only has honeycomb
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mesh but also like a a fine mesh behind it for dust filtration presumably uh
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these come out very easily this is a feature that I love on NZXT cases
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because I hate fussing around with these things it's a pain and if you just go
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like that comes in comes out you don't have to like mash it out from the from
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the back or anything like that also in the front oh and these are my these are
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my favorite okay this is something that I first saw introduced I believe with
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the H2 there we go how's it come there we go so both sides check this out oh no
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fan cabling what do you think of that so you see these contacts right here that's
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your four pin pwm that's just a a simple
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pass through so then on here you see the
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contacts for power and then you can actually adapt any fan for use with this
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uh with this sled here that goes or sled cage whatever you want to call it that
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goes into the front or rather three pin just by plugging this in here and then
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by taking the whole thing and clicking
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it into the front love that I think that's a great feature because wiring up
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the front the front fans on a given case
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can be a total nightmare and is often
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just really really clumsy the way it's done this is very very elegant I'm going
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to go ahead and pull these out just so that we have access to the front loaded
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3 and A2 in hard drive trays and check out how many there are yes that is eight
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3 and 1/2 in hard drive cages also with support four 2 and 1/2 in ssds so you
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can see the holes are here and then
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here okay that is not how that is meant to work and don't worry that should not
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reflect poorly on the case itself let me show you how that is intended to work if
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you put it in straight then it Clips in if you put it in at an angle and it
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falls right through so uh be careful when mounting hard drives in this case
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because if you putot it in at a random angle you're going to drop a hard drive
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into the back of your computer it's going to break your video card you're going to have a bad day all right front
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panel connectors we've got uh front panel oh these aren't labeled okay well
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it's not the end of the world I guess just have to try and remember one of them is mic one of them is headphone
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front USB 3 uh front USB 2 * 3 and we've
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got our front hard drive and power LEDs power switch is accessible from here
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from the top and then we have a reset switch uh in addition to that here we
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find a little storage compartment which is kind of neat and what's also neat
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about this is check this out okay we've got a cable routing channel here so what
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happens is I've got a pair of headphones that have about oh man they must have
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like a 3 m cable on them typically my
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gaming tower sits sort of next to me right about kind of here do I need 3 m
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if I'm plugged into the front panel audio I don't think so so what you can
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do is you can plug in your front panel audio run the cable just up here into
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this channel coil It Up In Here run it out
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this channel and then you can take it sort
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of down here and over to where it needs
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to go without interfering with your Optical drives or anything like that so
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that's pretty cool and then finally there's a little bit of storage here look at that it stays where you put
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it smart all right also on the top of
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the case I realized I'm spending a lot of time on the top of this case but
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there's a lot of stuff here we have honeycomb mesh once again and we have a
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dedicated spot for a dual 120 mm water
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cooling radiator and fans so the whole thing just Clips in like that covers it
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up or doesn't cover it up whatever you prefer so you can either take your
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radiator and put it on the top actually
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yeah yeah so you've got space for look at that they've given you all the
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flexibility in the world here you can either run your tubing down this side or you can run your tubing down this side
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so you can have the radiator on top for a nice clean clean aesthetic because
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you'll just see radiator fins through here or you can put your fans on the top
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and mount the radiator directly to the case and you can see like your LEDs or
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whatever else like that so uh that's that's also a pretty cool thing that
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they've thought of with this case uh let's look at the back so at the back we
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find a 120 mm cooling fan these things
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which I'm not a huge fan of especially when you have like a dedicated place to
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mount a dual rad in the top so I don't see why you do an external water cooling
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setup IO Shield seven PCI slots bottom mounted power supply and look at this a
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hard drive sled all right
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let's open this baby up these thumb screws are pretty tight I'm going go
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ahead and grab my screwdriver so just for a change of pace
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we're going to do the back panel first I've removed the screws now so remember
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they're not always tight if you put them in fingertight you'll be able to get
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them out with your fingers so it's not like oh these are magic thumb screws
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that only work with a screwdriver guess they might as well not have used thumb screws it's not like that it's just a
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matter of them being tightened a little bit too much at the factory so it was
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hard to get off all right on the back here we have lots of room for Cable
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Management check that out in fact 23 mm
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of clearance is what they're specking out here and I believe it that looks
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very good we've also got lots of room for cables to come through here come up
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through here up through here up through here so there's your eight pin connector
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that's where that one's going to go and then this is this is also something I
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really love to see lots of little Loops see these little Loops these are all for
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zip ties so you can take all of your cables that you're managing zip tie them
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so that they stay nice and flat and so it doesn't interfere with each other and
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make it difficult to close the other panel of the case they've also
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reinforced the strength of their motherboard back panel by putting in
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these bumps like this they are actually significantly adding to the rigidity of
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the motherboard back plane this can be important when shipping a system uh
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particularly so if you're ordering a system online you can be pretty confident going with something like a
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tempest for1 Elite other than that I see
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places to put screws into your Optical drives I see places
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to I don't know what those are for if you guys know what these are for let me
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know cuz I don't I see places to plug in the fan leads to those front fan
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connectors and other than that I think we're pretty much done with the back
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panel let's move over to the other side where we have a
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nice side window design all right which
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gives you a view of your hard drive cables okay that I could sort of maybe
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going this way might have been a little bit better but that wouldn't have looked
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as good with the overall slant of the case and the overall design but either
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way you're going to be able to see your graphics card your CPU all your fancy
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pants hardware and I'm just going to lay it down to make my life a little bit
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easier here guys so here are all of your internal connectors so there's power
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that's going to power those fans in all likelihood um we've also got front USB 3
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front USB 2 HD audio other more different front USB 2 front panel
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connectors so your power switch your reset switch all that good stuff and
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these are all black cables love it even the usb3 cable is black up to the point
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where it plugs into the motherboard where it has to be colorcoded very nice
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love to see it in terms of included accessories and documentation it's all
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in here so 17 different languages good on you in
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zxt you clearly intend to sell these worldwide or have really sort of strange
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policies about selling only in the US cuz I really don't know how many people
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speak oh no oh no these are 17 ha 17
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things that are labeled in this picture in only 1 2 3 4 5 6 7even eight
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different languages so I was wrong all right so that gives you the steps for
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how to install most of the stuff in the elite
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410 or rather the Tempest 410 Elite here
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we've got some zip ties very nice we've
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got some oh look at that the bags are all labeled so you got stand offs you
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got M35 flat you've got uh some 632
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screws flat and 632 screws hexagon very
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nice so what else we got
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here we have thumb screws so I guess that's somewhere to
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store additional thumb screws or what actually it looks like that may be
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the case these look like optical drive
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base screws you know what give me a second I'm going to find out what these
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are so figured out what it is it's in the manual go figure read the blank
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manual uh so I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to show you guys what you do
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you install a hard drive you take this out it's a really long screw so then you
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go ahead and put it here and you secure your hard drive in place that is what
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you do with it all right so let's look more closely at the inside of the case
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as a whole so in the front we got our two 120 mil fans we can put one more 120
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mil fan here we have a filtered see there's a fan filter on there there's a
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mesh we have a filtered gap for the power supply to get fresh air from the
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bottom of the case we also have rubber fan or rubber case feet that will keep
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it off the ground or table or wherever you're keeping it so you're going to get some air flow to your power supply no
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big deal power supply you can have almost any length of power supply even
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up to like here so you're not going to have any clearance issues with your
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drives in terms of video cards though um
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I'm not sure but I'm going to go ahead I'm going to grab a 6990 since I happen
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to have one handy here uh I guess I'll
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have to do a GTX 590 first on account of
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I can't get the hold on oh sure whatever that'll count I can't get the 6990 out
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without taking these first so
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590 oo Apple 590 okay let's try that one
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so the Apple 590 is going to go right about here so you're going to have to be
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yeah you're probably going to have to take out a couple of hard drive cages if
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you want to put a 6990 in here although
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I mean very few people actually buy 6990
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it's just the kind of thing I like to mention if it comes up so as soon as I
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uh as soon as I take these out I should
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have enough room for that
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particular graphics card so I'll move
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that move that move
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that and yeah so that would fit so it'll
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fit up to a 6990 which at this time is
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the longest most power hungry graphics card out there all right in the top
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we've got those dual 120s or dual 140s in the back we've got that 120 and I
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think that pretty much covers everything I wanted to say about the Tempest 410
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Elite this is actually a really nice looking case great quality to the paint
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finish I love the finish of the paint on here and it matches between the metal
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and plastic parts very very well which is difficult to do so the inside looks
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very similar to the plastic top here you actually can't really see much
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difference here at all that should not be taken for granted like I said very
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very difficult don't forget to subscribe to lus techtips for more unboxings
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