| Moneual MonCaso 972S Home Theater PC Case
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Internal Inspection:
The next image shows exactly what you will find with the top cover slid off. The inside of the MonCaso 927S is rather spacious and orderly. The area for the motherboard is free of obstructions, and all drives mount in removable cages found at the front of the case. There is also a good deal of ventilation in the case. Even though there are only two (80mm) fans included, there are a total of eight ventilated sections, two of which could be used in conjunction with fans.
There is room for four 3.5 inch drives, two in each of two removable cages, and there is room for one 5.25 inch optical drive. These cages make installing drives easy, but it could be much easier. You can mount drives to the cages outside of the case for convenience, but there is nothing tool-less about the process. On top of that, it would be nice to have some sort of vibration isolation mounts to help reduce the noise that could be produced by four hard drives mounted directly to metal frames. One very nice feature of these hard drive cages is that 80mm fans (not included) can be mounted on the ends that face the side wall of the case. Not only will these fans provide cooling for any drives, they can simply be used for case intake fans since the walls are ventilated in these locations.
 
Despite the positives about these drive cages, this is also where I encountered my first (series of) issues. Each hard drive cage is mounted to the side of the case with one screw, and to the optical drive cage with two screws. The optical drive cage is then mounted to the bottom of the case with four more screws. Of the ten total screws to deal with, three were damaged before I even had a chance to do anything with them. A screw holding one hard drive cage to the side of the case had a stripped head (see above right image), one screw's threads were stripped, and one screw holding a hard drive cage to the optical drive cage was so badly cross-threaded I had to use pliers to remove it. For such a high end product, this type of hasty assembly just shouldn't happen.
The back of the case is shown below, where we see the VGA cable passing through the far right tool-less expansion slot, the two "Cool Age" 80mm exhaust fans with 3-pin to 4-pin power adapters, and an interesting power supply opening. There is a vent on the side wall by the power supply which initially made me think that you 'could' mount the PSU to have the intake face this way to draw in outside air. The bolt pattern on the back of the case dictates that you must mount your power supply this way. If you don't have a power supply with a fan in this orientation it doesn't matter, but for those that do, the fan can not be used to aid in case cooling, but will be getting cool air from outside the case.
 
There are quite a few wires to connect with the Moneaul MonCaso 972S. Not only do you have all of the typical front panel connections (minus a reset button), you need a USB header for the card reader, another USB header/connection for the touchscreen, and power for the touchscreen. The touchscreen USB connection can either be made to a motherboard header or to a typical USB port thanks to the adapter shown in the below right image. The power comes thanks to a 24-pin motherboard adapter. I am not sure why it has to be powered from the 24-pin connection, as using a 4-pin connection would have been more convenient and easier on the cable management side of things. I have powered 7 inch touchscreens from a computer's 12V supply for other projects, and a typical drive connection works just fine.
 
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