Installation & Operation (continued):
The rest of the installation went about as expected and we are to the point where everything is in the case. I have worked with several mid-tower cases over the years, but this one felt particularly cramped. Perhaps my components have gotten larger (which is partially true), but I just didn't seem to have room for everything, and cable management in particular was a bit difficult.
As you can see in the images below, the case is absolutely packed, and with such a large window everyone will see your mess! This is exactly the reason why closet doors are solid, you don't want everyone to see what is going on inside!
I initially installed all the necessities, plus two PCI Express graphics cards, two 5.25" removable hard drive bays, and an optical drive, leaving the 3.5" bays open. The close quarters between the PSU and removable drive bays made it impossible to connect everything, let alone neatly manage cables, so that plan was later scrapped and the drives were installed in the cage they were intended to go into.
Another issue with the removable drive bays is that they had to be installed in the upper two bays, as the case wasn't deep enough to allow them any lower; they would hit the motherboard!
A few other issues include the oddly positioned PC speaker. The cables for everything else were exceedingly long and reached their headers with ease. The cable on the speaker barely reached the speaker header, and it is almost as if you need to run it under the motherboard, making a diagonal line from corner to corner. Also, with SATA drives installed in the 3.5" drive cage, the SATA data connections all pressed against the side window. I know there are right angle SATA cables available that would solve this problem, but I would prefer to not have to spend more on accessories that should be unnecessary.
The images below take a look at the front of the Armor Junior with the drives installed. The design allows easy access to your drives, unrestricted airflow to the fan and vents, but still manages to provide some protection from accidental bumps.
Finally, with the system all buttoned up and ready for use we have the action shot below. The blue glow from the case's LED fan and power button is supplemented by the blue LEDs on both graphics cards.
Overall I am quite pleased with the case. It looks sharp, and brings the general styling and features of the original Armor to a case more suited to housing a gaming rig that might regularly travel to LAN parties. The noise output is minimal, but it manages to keep the temperature of the processor within a few degrees of what it produced when sitting in open air (no case).
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