Zalman Z11 Plus Computer Case Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
2,353 words · ~11 min read
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Well, that's what you would think happened to this box. I have no idea
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what happened to this box. Zman dropped it off and was like, "Hey, can you check
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out this case?" And I was like, "Sure." Was somebody like eating the side of the
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box? They said, "We don't know." So, we're going to open this up and find out
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if in spite of the fact that this case
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has apparently been shipped to and from the depths of hell at least once,
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whether it is in okay shape on the inside. This is the Zelman Z11 Plus. It
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is an ATX midtower case with a front mesh cover for ultra cooling
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performance. It supports up to seven system fans, supports a bottom PSU
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installation, and aperture for cable management. Really? I think they mean
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cable management holes. Uh, black interior coating. Zelman's powerful HDD
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cooling solution. Tool-free hard drive installation. Spacious interior for
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installing up to 290 mm or 29 cm video
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cards. Acryil tuning side panel. I think they
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mean windowed side panel. Supports two USB 3 ports. Front and bottom dust
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filters. 2 and 12 in hard drive SSD mount on the rear side of the motherboard tray. Tray place plate tray.
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Uh, separate apertures for convenient CPU cooler installation. I think they
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mean a CPU cutout. And three in one bracket provided rear tube apertures for
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liquid cooling systems. Somebody thinks
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that aperture is an appropriate synonym
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for hole in this case. And um, you could
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make that argument, but I don't think
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that that's really what they meant. Okay, here we go. So, we've got a hard
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foam. While it isn't my favorite, it is extremely thick,
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very robust, and the case did by all
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appearances manage to arrive in one
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piece. One thing came loose, though. So,
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I'm just going to check this out here. Okay, so this is just a little guy that
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goes in the front right here. That's a 3 and 1/2 in drive cover. I think that has
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to be installed from the inside. So, I'm not going to try for too long at this
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because that will be boring for you to watch. So, we'll fix that after. We'll
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just leave it out for now. So, this is the Z11 Plus. This is actually kind of a
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slick looking case. It looks to have a lot of space inside. There is the uh
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smoked side panel window. So, it is not a 100% clear. It is for more of a
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darkened subdued look. If you do put red lighting, it looks really, really good
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with smoked dark side panels like this. We also have in terms of uh Okay, here I
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got to stay stay focused here. It's late and I'm tired. So, let's just take this
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off. So, that is protecting what appears to be a tray for storing like you know
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screws and um u I don't know like
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pocket chain and like SSDs that you
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might happen to have lying around. You could store them there. Um I know this
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isn't the first world problem, right? Where am I going to store my SSD that's
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lying around? Um, moving along, we have two front USB 3 ports, a reset switch, a
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hard drive indicator LED, two front USB 2.0 ports, headphone and microphone
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jack. And really, does this do anything? No, it doesn't. Okay. Power switch right
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here, and a power LED under the power
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switch. Now, ventilation wise, at the front, we have almost a full mesh thing
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going on, except where there are ventilation grills. So, it's grills or
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its mesh or its apertures, whatever you want to call it. There is a lot of
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ventilation on this case. So, here we can see a front 140 mm fan. That is a
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filtered fan spot. And it looks like
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this does come off. Give me a second here, guys. It looks like we're going to
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be able to take this off more easily once we get the case open. So, we'll have a closer look at that, as well as
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their unique hard drive cooling solution, which uses these vent holes
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here on either side to move air actively
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directly over your hard drive. So, the side panels are pretty run-of-the-mill
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steel construction with the plastic sort of aggressive car looking venty thing
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going on as well as the uh the bulging out window that actually serves not only
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an aesthetic purpose, but also a practical purpose because you can install very tall CPU coolers in this
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case without any difficulty. at the back. You see here that okay from the
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front it looks very more uh like um with
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fewer holes in it. And then uh from the back you can see that there is ample
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room for air flow coming from the inside of the case to be exhausted out the
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back. Uh, at the back we actually see we've
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got a 120 mm cooling fan, seven PCI
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slots, bottom mounted power supply, and I think all of this was covered when I
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was checking out the specs on the box itself. However, here we are reiterating
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it because I need to buy time while I take off these screws. Let's take off
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the side panel. So, here we go. That appears to be a
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80 mil. That appears to be an 80 mm exhaust fan which is pulling air
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directly from over the hard drives and
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then exhausting that out here. Very
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cool. Plugs in with a four pin Molex peripheral connector. Overall side panel
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construction is actually fairly solid. Not bad at all. All right. Once we Oh,
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you know what? Here, I took these screws off. So, I'm sure to have that fall off
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if I don't do something with it. Now, this one is also exhaust. So, both of
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them are pulling air from that front intake fan and then exhausting them out
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the case. And this one also plugs in with a four pin uh Molex peripheral
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connector. And due to like this uh this plastic piece here, once again, it feels
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quite quite solid overall.
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Kind of unique design actually. Very cool. All right. So, there is the front
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140 mm fan that I was talking about. And then here is the toolless hard drive
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installation mechanism. So, you just use these. Pull these out if you want to
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take out your drives. In fact, we should probably go grab a drive just so that we
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can show you assuming I have one lying around, which apparently I do. So, if
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you're probably if your first world problem happens to be where to store the hard drives that you have lying around,
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uh, Slick is telling me something, but I don't know. I don't know what it is right now. Something about screws. Give
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me a minute. All right. So, Slick tells me this is
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how I do it. I don't know if you can necessarily call this toolless, but uh
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there you go. You slide it in like that, and then this piece is pulled out in
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order to remove the drive. Uh you can
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also There we go. Put in an additional screw for added security if you're
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worried about the drive coming out. However, you will lose some of the
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antiibration vibration dampening effects of the
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rubber mounts if you do actually happen to do it that way. Uh, what else have we
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got here in terms of accessories? So, it comes with an 8 pin extender. This is
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actually a phenomenal value ad. These cost anywhere from about 5 to 10 bucks
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to buy. So, it comes with the case for a bottom mounted power supply that
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actually isn't even in that tall of a case. So, if you have a decent power
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supply, you just use this and then like save one of these for a rainy day. All
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right, we got a couple PCI back plates, including one that is set up for these
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USB 3 cables, which plug into the back. That's a little bit disappointing. Um,
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I'd expect at some point they'll revise this case to use an internal header, but
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for now it isn't using one. We've also got all of our mounting screws, a couple
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cable ties, as well as a boatload of
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thumb screws that look like they would be useful for all kinds of things,
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including mounting drives. So, these guys are threaded with fine threads,
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guys. So,
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no, I don't think you're I don't think you're right. I don't think it's for
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that slick. I think it's for mounting the motherboard.
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I could be wrong, though. Let's find out.
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Yeah, I think these are actually for mounting the motherboard. Cool. Because
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all the standoffs are in here as well. I actually really like the look of
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mounting the motherboard with thumb screws. There's no reason you can't do it in any case, but uh as long as you
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have screws that are threaded correctly for your standoffs, but I think it looks really sharp. So, there's a user's
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manual and let's get moving with the
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case itself. Here we go. So, in terms of the fans you can mount in this thing,
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you have a ton of different options. So, there's the front fan. There's the two
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other fans that come with it that cool your hard drives. There's also room for
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up to another two 120 or 140 mm exhaust
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fans up here in the top. A 120 in the back, a 120 or a 140 with a filter. So,
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that's going to be an intake. On the bottom, there's your power supply fan.
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which is also filtered. That's good. And then finally, you can install another
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fan on the back of the on the back of the motherboard where your video card
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is. So that will actually for Okay, this is interesting because for video cards
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that use um aftermarket coolers like this one where they actually blow a lot
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of the heat down towards your motherboard, cooling the back of the
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board is something that could be very useful. I've never seen that feature
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before. So, that's uh that's an interesting touch. Uh what else we got
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here? Right, all your included internal connectors. So, your front power switch
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and LEDs and all that whatnot, hoo-ha, as well as your internal USB 2 header.
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And then your internal USB or rather your external USB 3 cable. So, those
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ones are going to go around to the back of the motherboard and plug in right
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there using that PCI slot pass through.
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We have a fairly large CPU cutouts, some pre-installed
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um motherboard standoffs. So although you'll have to put in the rest yourself,
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that's fine because this is pretty much what you need for ITX. Then for MATX or
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ATX, you're going to go ahead and expand how many you have in there. 5 and 1/4 in
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bays. I actually never did count those. We've got five of them with one of them
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with the 3 and 1/2 in adapter that that piece was missing from before. These are
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all filtered, so they have foam in them, which will keep dust from accumulating
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from air that is sucked in through the front of the case. Overall construction
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is actually fairly solid considering what a value this case is. They haven't
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uh they haven't cheaped out on the on the overall build quality of it. It
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feels very solid, which means it may not be as much of a factor when
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it's just a case, but once you load it up with a bunch of heavy hardware,
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especially if you're going to ship it anywhere, the cases that aren't built as
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well, tend to show very quickly where
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the problems exist. So, if you aren't doing things like reinforcing the
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motherboard tray with these kinds of bends, which incidentally also gives you
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um a lot of different cable routing options or that's Zelman has
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incidentally given you cable routing options as well as all these different
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places to tie down cables. It's those little nice touches that make a case
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much easier to work with and much more solid. Look at this. Look at all these
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cable hold downs. These are more handy than you'd think because there isn't a
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ton of room on the back of this motherboard tray for cable routing. So,
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being able to lay everything down flat and cable manage it cleanly is going to
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be the difference between a tidy case with all the cables running up the back
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and an awful looking cable manage case with the cables running up the front. I
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think that pretty much covers it. So, thank you for checking out my unboxing
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and first look at the Zelman Z11 Plus. Don't forget to subscribe to Finest Tech
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Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos. Slick burned me.
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That's the SSD mount on the back of the motherboard tray. That is not for a fan.
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Although, you know, you could put a hole in the other side panel, and you could
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put a fan there if you really wanted to. If you wanted to execute my
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well-intentioned plan of cooling the motherboard near the PCI slots better,
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you could do that. Or you could just install your SSD here and run your cable
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around here to your motherboard and it would look very tidy and clean and that would be a good thing.