Antec Three Hundred Two 302 Gaming Computer Case Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
2,370 words · ~11 min read
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Welcome to my unboxing of a case that is not actually what it appears to be. So,
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I wish I could show you guys the correct retail packaging for the Anttech 3002,
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but my sample arrived before they actually had, and I'm very sorry that
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this uh unboxing is a little late, but before they had a 302 box, or maybe it
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didn't. That was my assumption. but inside. So what they've done is they've
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double boxed it so that no one involved in the
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transportation process could have known
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that something so top secret was being shipped via courier and then opened it
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up to see the secrets inside.
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That's probably not how it went down. Okay, so the 3002
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is, as you may or may not be able to figure out on your own, an upgrade to
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the enormously successful Anttech 300.
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If you've ever gone to a LAN event, what you've probably noticed is that other
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than Anttech 900's and 300's, everything
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else is kind of like a few here and a few there. Between those two, they are
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what you could label sort of the gamer's choice cuz they, especially at the time
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they were first introduced, had great features, great build quality, and
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very reasonable price points. So, the 3002, actually, I still need this for a
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sec. The 3002 ish
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the 3002 brings into the year 2012
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everything that was good about the 300 before including the value optimized
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price point, the excellent cooling options and adds a few things that were
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maybe missing with the 300 given how old
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of a design that that one was. So, I'm going to show you guys what Antech has
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to say for themselves before I get into the case myself. So, up to 12 1/2 in of
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expandability. Uh, maximum cooling. We'll cover that later. Uh, ease of use.
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So, toolless 3 and 1/2 and 5 and 1/4 in bays.
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Front panel USB 3. Uh, that we'll get into more later. A washable PSU air
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filter and front intake filter. Eight expansion slots for up to XL ATX
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motherboards with eight slots. So this particular one for example, the X79 UD7
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does have eight slots, but ones like the Gigabyte Assassin for X58 have nine. So
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watch out for that. XLATX is not a real standard. Okay. Side cooling fan, cable
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routing holes behind the motherboard tray. Okay, let's have a look at the
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outside before we open this baby up. So for one thing, you can see the front has
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got a bit of a curved appearance to it. So, don't worry. The bays are still
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straight. So, you're going to have that very clean look even if you install
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optical drives. You're not going to have, you know, how some cases have like
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curved front bezels and then you install a flat optical drive and it looks kind
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of goofy because the rest of it's curved and there looks out of place. So, they
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haven't done that. They've just done a curved look on the side. Looks very
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slick actually. Two USB 3.0 ports. Microphone. Headphones. Reset switch is
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very hard to accidentally press. You can see even if I push on it like this, I
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can't really press it. You got to get right in there and push it in order to
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reset your system. This is awesome because the last thing you want to do is
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accidentally reset your system with your knee while you're in the middle of a game. This is a gaming case after all,
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so they have to consider things like that. We've got our hard drive cages.
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And that's pretty much it for the front. I mean, the Anttech 300 was a very
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classic looking case, and they've gone that route again with the 3002. Now,
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this is interesting. More on this once we open up the case, but there's a 120
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mm cooling fan spot on the motherboard
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side of the inside of the case. So, yes.
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Yes, more on that later. Yes, indeed. We have a 140 mm cooling fan in the top as
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well as a couple water cooling grommets. Although most people probably won't use
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these. Hey, you never know. Um, they could.
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If you did want to do an external water cooling setup, it's handy to not have to
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punch holes in your case or use those horrible PCI bracket passroughs that
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usually the tubing doesn't even like fit properly through. So, let's take the
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side panel off. Inside, we find it does
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not have a black interior, although it's up to the individual user whether or not
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that matters. I've always thought it's a little bit silly to do a black interior
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on a case that doesn't have a window anyway, but to each his own. Uh oh, we
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should look at the back of the case before we wrap up here. So, here are our
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eight expansion slots, bottom- mounted power supply, 120 mm cooling fan, as
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well as speed adjusters for both this
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120 mil fan and the 140 mm fan in the top. These are two cool fans, which
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means you have low and high RPM
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settings. On the inside of the case, we
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find a number of things. So, we find the power supply filter, which actually Oh,
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locks in place. Okay, that's kind of handy. There you go. So, you can take
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that out, clean it off, put it back in, and it comes out the side. This is a
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very smart design decision because when you're set up at your Okay, here. Here,
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I'm going to put this where it would be. So, this would be next to my monitor.
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And uh so, I got all my cables coming out of the back of the system and my
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monitor's here. And so many cases implement the fan filters back here. How
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am I going to reach this? My face is in my monitor now. I have to take my case.
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I have to hope that I don't pull on my cables too hard. If they put it on the
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side, all of a sudden it's much easier for me to get it out. All I have to do
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is take my case, angle it a little bit, and I can get it out no problem.
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Back to the interior. So, pretty much a no frills interior,
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though they've done a nice big CPU cutout. And now, let's talk about this
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right here. So, this is a 120 mm cooling
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fan spot that's on the other side of the motherboard tray. Why? Why, you may ask?
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Well, check out this gaming motherboard. There are actual CPU VRM components on
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the back of the motherboard that in
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addition to the fact that any modern motherboard has a ton of copper content
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in it. So it's is actually conducting a lot of heat away from the CPU just out
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here through the PCB itself. If you ever touch the back of a motherboard, it's
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quite hot. that allows Anttech 3002 users to install an additional 120 mil
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fan back there, use it as an exhaust and pull some of this heat away from the
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back of the motherboard. Alternately, I guess you could use it as an intake and blow the air directly at the back of the
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motherboard if you want more of a positive air pressure thing going on in
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your case to keep dust out. That's not
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not really sure how I would do it. I guess since it's got filtered intakes, I
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would probably use it as exhaust, but I mean, the choice is yours. So, here are
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our three toolless 5 and a/4 inch bays.
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And here are the mounting pieces for our
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six toolless 3 and 1/2 inch bays. There's actually not a whole lot here in
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terms of frills and gimmicks, so I'm not going to bother taking it out. But you got your screws and your hard drive
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rails and uh Oh, actually, okay, I will take this out. Give me a sec. Well,
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unfortunately, they're not the same ones that were included with the 1100. So,
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I'm not going to do the demo where I lift Oh, actually, I guess I can. Okay.
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Okay, I don't think they're the same ones, but it's actually fairly secure.
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So, once you put these on, all you do is
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slide your drive until it locks. There's no screws involved whatsoever, and it's
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pretty darn secure once it's in there. Another thing to note about Anttech
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cases is even when they have a value case or a budget case or whatever it is
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you want to call it, the build quality is always there. And this is not always
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true of cases that might look flashier or have more features. And this is this
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is just me, Lionus, personally talking to you guys right now. And I want to
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just I'm not going to name any names when I talk about their competitors, but
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not all of Ant's competitors would have built the 3 and 1/2 in hard drive cage
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like this. See the way they have folded over the metal so that there's
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absolutely no chance of any kind of a rough edge. Not only does that improve
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the uh the usability of the case by making it safer, it also adds structural
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strength to it. The other thing they've done is this is just a design thing.
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It's not like the metal's more expensive, but the way they've done the cutouts here also gives this an enormous
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amount of strength. I have seen cases damaged in shipping to the point where
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this is bent so much that a hard drive slid in here would just fall right out
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or like go to the side because it doesn't even catch on these rails
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anymore. But I really have never seen that with an antec. So there you go,
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guys. Uh SSD mount. We've got a 2 and
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1/2 in SSD mount in the bottom. Uh, personally, I would prefer to have seen
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a toolless uh 3 and 1/2 in mechanism that allows you to install more SSDs,
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but it's not the end of the world. And it looks like we've got another SSD
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mount on the other side of the motherboard tray. So, you can put you
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can put that one hiding this one. I like I like hiding SSDs behind the
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motherboard. That's awesome. So, uh, what else we got here? Oh, let's look at
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the front fan filter. I haven't even shown that yet. So, there's a couple clips here on the front. I'm going to go
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ahead and pull that off. So, a front fan filter is
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here. Yes, there we go.
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Comes off somehow. Oh, there we go. So, it's just these
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little clips right here. And you pull it out like that. There we go. So, that can be cleaned fairly quickly, fairly
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easily. Pop that back in place. Once I
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figured out how to do it, that's actually quite quick.
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Pop this back on. Oh, these go into the hinge first.
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There we go. And I think that pretty
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much covers it. Is there anything I'm missing? So, we already covered the 12 1/2 in thingamabber. Oh, right. The
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cable management on the back. And Slick's gone ahead and turned it so that
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he can see it so he could remind me of something. But, uh, I have a cheat sheet
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over there as well.
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Aha. So, there you go. Aha. Cable management. So, cable management is
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something where the 3002 just blows away its predecessor. Look at
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this. 3 cm of space on the back of the motherboard tray. That means you can
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actually route a 24 pin cable without any hassle. You've got one, two, three.
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We could call that a cable management spot. I could potentially call that a
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cable management spot. Okay, it's going to be hard to count these, but four
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major ones. And then you can see they've got this extra room up here for your
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eight pin right there. And then they've also got a little one here for front
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audio or USB 3 or whatever else. Uh, speaking of which, the included cables
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are right here. So, it does have an internal USB 3 header for those two USB
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3 front ports. Very high quality cable, actually. That's good to see. And then,
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hey, look at this. Hey, hey, black and gray, which happens to be the color
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scheme of the case. Power reset and front panel switches. And there's our
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front panel audio. So, that's the kind of thing I would run through here in
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order to uh make it more more hidden.
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Also, cable management spots on the back. You can use the included zip ties
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to There we go. Anchor your cables to these
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and then tie them up tight so that when you put the other side panel back on,
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you don't have any trouble fitting it into place. I think that pretty much
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wraps up the 3002 for me. Don't forget
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to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer
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videos. And I do have one more thing to say. Check this out. They thought of
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everything. There's a vent right here. So that means that whether you're doing
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intake or exhaust, the air is actually going to have somewhere to go um on that
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fan that's on the back of the motherboard tray. Yeah. Don't forget to
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subscribe.