Foxconn TLA-570A

This case is black; its silvery façade has black details, too. The front panel has four open bays for 5.25” devices and for one 3.5” device (drives with a silvery or black case are going to look well here). One plastic bracket in a 5.25” bay may be left in place – it has a cut for the tray of the optical drive and an Eject button.

In the center of the front panel, to the left of the floppy drive, there are microphone and headphones connectors and two USB ports. The wires from these connectors go into the case in a single cable. The plugs are all labeled, so you won’t have problems attaching them to the mainboard’s onboard headers.

There are four air-intake holes at the bottom of the front panel, covered with a plastic grid. This looks cute enough. The Power button is in-between these holes (the Reset button is missing).

Both right and left panels of this system case are removable; they are held on screws. The left side has an opening for cooling the CPU via a plastic funnel whose design is the same as we saw with the above-described cases.

To install 5.25” and 3.5” devices you should remove the face panel. But before that, you have to remove the right panel, too, to gain access to the latches. By the way, be careful with the latches – they can be broken too easily. It’s not very simple even then: the face panel can be taken off, but it doesn’t detach completely – it remains hanging on wires, which may become an obstacle during the assembly.

The chassis can accommodate four 5.25” and six 3.5” devices, two of which are installed into “open” bays. The remaining four 3.5” places are for hard disk drives, and there’re mounting holes against them for fastening a fan which would improve greatly the thermal conditions of your hard drives.

The 5.25” devices are fastened with ease, although the fastening mechanism seems difficult at first. You insert two screws into the device and place it into the bay, then lower the mechanism of the holder down, put the 5.25” device in place and fix it by lowering the holder.

Thus, the device is held more or less firmly on the left side only. On the right side it is supported with the tabs cut out in the right side of the 5.25” bay.