| Sunbeamtech Zorro ATX Case
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Installation and Operation (continued):
When it came time to install my X850XT video card I ran into a slight problem. There are plastic dividers between each of the PCI slot areas. My card requires two slots and this plastic divider was preventing my card from even coming close to seating. A little slice with a utility knife and a few bends back and forth and the divider was out of the way. I do not see any need for these dividers and the hold down integrity does not seem to be affected. I love finally having a video card pretty side up. I can only imagine that cooling will be improved with the heatsink on top.
 
Mounting the hard drives required me to lay the case on its side to insert the screws from the bottom. It seems to me that this could have been done differently. Maybe a removable hard drive cage would have been the answer. Once the hard drives were mounted I noticed another issue with this design. The SATA cables stick out too far. I was able to get the side cover on, but only with an extreme angle on the SATA connector. PATA hard drives on the other hand will not have this issue.
 
Once all the components were in place it was time to get some power to everything. Once again I ran into an issue that could have been remedied by a change in the hard drive mount location. The wires exiting the OCZ power supply come right into the side of the hard drive cage. This made routing the wiring very difficult. There is a round opening in the back of the hard drive cage that would work very well for routing wires if you are using a power supply that does not have wrapped wires. The thicker wiring I was dealing with did make it through the opening, but not without a ton of work. The Zorro case has many areas to hide wiring. There is a chamber above the first 5.25" slot and even more room behind the optical drives to route wiring.
 
Early on I guessed that the Grand Air Duct was in no way going to fit over my Thermalright XP120 and 120mm fan... And I was right. Although the Grand Air Duct does have some built in modification provisions, the round frosted air duct can be clipped out and there is a panel right above it that can also be clipped, the processor placement of my DFI board doesn't line up with the duct opening anyway. I really was hoping for the Grand Air Duct to fit correctly, it seems like a very well thought out addition to the backward Zorro. Air is channeled from the case and exhaust of the power supply directly out the 120mm fan mounted on the back of the case. At the same time processor heat is channeled out the large side opening. Not only that, but it allows you to mount a third 120mm fan pointing directly over your video card. On motherboards that fit a more normal processor placement and heat sinks that are smaller than small dogs, the Grand Air Duct should be able to provide significant air flow advantages.
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