Installation:
Installing your motherboard is like any other case. Install the stand-offs, and then screw down the motherboard. All of the internal connectors are long enough to reach any location for any three-pin fan connector to reach the fan controller, as well as the USB ports, and the power connectors. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the thermal lead. Of the three, two are long enough to reach the CPU and video cards. The hard drive lead is a different story, and as mentioned previously it is barely long enough to reach the top 3.5 hard drive bay. Forget trying to put it into the second hard drive bay. Because of this, I ended up mounting my hard drive in the 3.5" drive bay.
Installing the hard drive in the 3.5" drive bay presented another issue. The drive would not go all the way into the bay to be mounted properly using the tool-less clips. At first, I assumed the issue was limited to hard drives, so I attempted to install a 3.5 media reader and a fan controller. Same issue! Here you can see how the hard drive scraped the side of the drive bay when I tried to push it all the way in. I ended up leaving the drive unsecured, thankfully it was pushed in far enough that the tightness of 3.5" drive bay held it in place.
 
After installing the motherboard and the hard drive, I decided it was time to install my 5.25" drive bay devices. These include a removable hard drive chassis, a Memorex DVD-ROM, and a Cooler Master CoolDrive IV. My first attempt at installing the hard drive chassis in the lowest bay caused an issue similar to the 3.5" drive bay. It wouldn't fit. I could see it was hitting the side of the drive bay, not by much, but enough that it was limiting the installation. Next I tried my DVD-ROM and Cooler Master CoolDrive IV in the same bay. Finally, I decided to install the devices starting at the second bay from the top. In the top three bays, the removable hard drive chassis and the Memorex DVD-ROM fit fine. After I installed the hard drive chassis, the Memorex DVD-ROM could now be installed in the fourth 5.25" drive bay. I believe this pushed the sides of the bay out enough where I could then install the Memorex DVD-ROM into the bottom bay, although it was very snug and had to be pushed in with some force.
Now that it's all installed and set-up, let's power it up and see how it looks. As you can see, a little bit of your system is visible through the windows. Mostly the drive cages and power supply. Just a fraction of the CPU cooler is visible. The side LED fan looks a lot nicer than it does in this picture. The fan pulls cool air in at the end of my video cards.
With the system powered up, we can take a closer look at the fan controller. On the display you see hard drive activity, fan rotation, and power flow (doesn't really monitor power flow). In the largest portion of the screen, you can see the percentage of the fan speed, unfortunately it doesn't tell you the RPM, so I can't tell you what 100% is compared to min/max RPM speeds. A potential issue with the fan controller is that the fan speed is for all three of the fan connections. You can't just turn down the VGA fan, while leaving the CPU fan at a higher speed. Next to the fan speed, you can see the temperatures from the three probes. As the controller changes between the thermal probes, the device it is displaying flashes below the temperature. Finally, to the right side of the display there are two buttons that increase or decrease the fan speed in 10% intervals. Additionally, you have two green hard drive activity LEDs. These flicker when you are accessing your hard drive.
The little remote that is included with the RX-9 performs two functions. The first function of the remote is to change the fan speed by pressing the up or down arrow. While adjusting the fan speed there are is a fairly loud beep to confirm the adjustment. The second function is to turn the computer on/off. This is the same as pressing the power switch, but you don't have to be right next to the computer. However, the remote only works within 10 feet of the case, and needs to be pointed at the case, pretty much directly at the display. I would caution taking this to a LAN party; somebody could "inadvertently" shut your computer down at a critical point.
A few additional thoughts regarding the operation of the RX-9... The front speakers provided a good amount of feedback from three different models of cell phones, to the point where the phones could not be used in the same room as the RX-9. Secondly, I assume the right speaker was faulty as the minute I connected the speakers, I got a loud ticking noise from it. After about 30 minutes it stopped, but the speaker wouldn't produce any sound at all. The left speaker works perfectly, and sounds good. They can't compare to a good set of 5.1 speakers, but do stand a little above mid-class 2.1 speakers. They would sound great for taking the machine to a LAN party.
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