Hard drives are put into this system case from the left side. The case can accommodate four drives, but the appropriate screws will only suffice for two devices. For an easier extraction of the drives from the basket, two special handles are fastened to the bottom of the PC case. These handles are screwed to the drives at their rear panels using the same cylinder-headed screws.

After that the drive slides down the guides into the basket until the plastic holder snaps shut. Unfortunately, you have to apply a considerable effort to do that, and the drive hits heavily against the internal side of the basket, which can be dangerous for drives that park their heads on the platter (like the Maxtor MaXLine Plus II 250GB I use in my tests).

The mainboard is installed onto a special tray without using any screws.

Although this fastening seems unreliable, the distances between the mounting poles are so well matched that the mainboard holds very firm on the plate. This solution actually saves your time during the assembly of the computer as soon as you grasp the idea. The whole operation is then performed with a single movement.

The mainboard on the plate, you move the plate towards the rear panel and fix it in place with a metal holder. There are holes for the mainboard’s pegs (not included with the case) under the plate, so you can fasten it in the old way, with screws, if necessary.

The seven slots for the expansion cards are covered with reusable gags. The gags and the cards’ brackets are fastened with the help of a curiously designed holder – you don’t need your screwdriver for that. The only alarming fact is that the holder’s ‘latches are made of plastic.

There are spring-loaded plates between the slits of the slots which press the brackets and the gags even tighter to the rear panel of the case.

The 300W ATX-300GTF power supply from FSP Group Inc. has a power-on switch and a power connector at its rear panel. This PSU offers you five Molex connectors (for hard disk drives and optical drives) and two mini-plugs for floppy drives. The cables are long enough for a comfortable assembly of the computer in this system case.

The case is ventilated with a 120mm exhaust fan installed on the rear panel. Holes for passive ventilation are located in the front, bottom (below the HDD basket) and rear panels of the case. Besides that, there are two vent holes in the left side: there’s an air-duct on the inside, against the top round hole. It directs air to the CPU cooler. The bottom hole is shaped like a rectangular and is positioned below the installed graphics card. The height of the output of the plastic air-duct can be regulated relative to the CPU cooler.

There’s an air filter – a metal grid – on the inside of this air-duct. This filter won’t protect against dust (the grid isn’t fine enough), but the CPU cooler’s fan will really be less dirty.

The temperatures of the computer’s subsystems in the TH-61 system case: