Assembly Tips

The two system cases are identical in dimensions as well as chassis design, so we took the Aquila for our tests. Why the Aquila? Because there shouldn’t be any problems with assembling a computer in a high-quality steel system case – it is more than enough rigid. But there are may be certain difficulties with an identical case, which is made of aluminum. It’s not a Lian-Li with 2mm thick panels, after all.

First of all, you should clear up the mess with the heap of interface and signal cables inside the system case. It would be more difficult to do that after the system is assembled.

The cables from the Power and Reset buttons and from the Power and HDD indicators are way too long, about one third longer than necessary. This block of buttons seems to have been taken from the original Armor without any modification and now the user has to bother where to tuck away the extra length of cable.

Then, install your power supply. If you install your mainboard first, you will hardly be able to mount the power supply easily (and if the mainboard is installed with a CPU and cooler, it is downright impossible to put the power supply in its place). After that, you can install the mainboard and expansion cards. There is nothing unusual here – the mainboard is secured with screws and the expansion cards, with latches. Then, connect the interface cables. Next go your optical and hard drives. The manufacturer announced a screw-less fastening mechanism for 5.25” devices, but you can’t do without a screwdriver here. First you have to unscrew the bay bracket on the system case itself (it’s not an ordinary bracket you are supposed to tear off):

Then, take off the plastic faceplate with a filter on the front panel:

You should put the screws from the brackets back into their sockets – it’s the easiest way not to lose them.

After that, it takes less than a minute to mount an optical drive. Just attach two rails to it…

…and insert the drive into the bay against stop:

Close the front panel:

The rails come in pairs (a left and a right one), so don’t confuse them: you just won’t be able to put the drive into the bay with two right or two left rails.