Installation (continued):
In the below left image we see the completed installation, minus the windowed side panel. Only a few inches of the power supply's cables are visible as they make connections at the top of the Power Bar, and overall the look is very neat. At the bottom of the Power Bar, only the necessary modular cables are in use, and in this case that means a single drive 4-pin connector, and a dual drive SATA drive connector. All other cables and wires are able to be routed neatly along the edge of the motherboard and behind the drives in order to maintain a clean appearance.
 
The above right image shows the backside of the opened chassis, which simply reveals that there is room behind the drive cages for hiding excess cables.
The next image provides a view you don't always get inside a computer, a look from above. Here we see that extra power supply cables can be hidden behind the unit, and the few cables used to connect to the Power Bar can be tucked away behind the 5.25" drive bays.
Overall I am pleased with the installation, but many steps that I have come to expect to be easy and tool-less were far from it in the m998. The need for screws to install drives is so uncommon these days, that it is hard to believe a case with such innovative features requires it. Even the locations where thumbscrews were used aren't necessarily convenient, as the small diameter of the screws can be hard to grasp, and they seem prone to stripping out the thin sheet metal they are threaded into.
Operation:
Once the installation is complete, using the case is a pleasure. The two 120mm fans run with minimal noise, and the system is able to maintain safe operating temperatures. The same test system was previously installed in a Cooler Master iTower 930 ATX case, where the load temperatures on the processor were seen to be around 42-45 degrees Celsius. Once moved into the m998, the same load conditions generate roughly the same temperatures, and now the maximum is in the range of 43-45 degrees Celsius.
While the fans may be quiet, there is a new element of system noise to deal with. My once quiet hard drives now seem to be amplified and quite noticeable. This is without a doubt due to the metal on metal interface between the drives and the cage, and between the cage and the case. Some sort of vibration isolation is fairly common these days, and the m998 could do with some.
As seen in the image below, the power LED glows blue, and is so bright in person that it actually illuminates the two HDD LEDs below it. While the hard drive activity lights are supposed to be yellow, they are overpowered by the blue light and are hard to see except from directly in front of the case.
Having the front panel connections out of site is a nice feature when they are not in use, but I found the door to be a bit of a hinderance in every day use. The opening is rather narrow, and the right hand USB port is actually too close to the hinge to actually use it with many of my flash drives. While the rest of the connections are centered in the opening and do not have this problem, I have found that I tend to leave Firewire and eSATA devices connected, so the door is always opened anyway.
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