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 Posted: December 03, 2003
Author: Spire
Manufacturer: PC Toys
Sponsor: PC Toys
Build:
One of the nice things about this case is a swing out and removable drive carrier. This drive carrier allows assembly of all your hard drives, optical drives and floppy drive. The carrier will mount one hard drive, and either one optical and a floppy, or 2 optical drives. A special adapter (included) and a small removable face plate allow the floppy to live in an optical space. The drive carrier removes for drive installation, then when installed back in case, swings out for connecting cables and power supply molex connectors. A very nice, easy to use, space saving design.
 
Motherboard installation was uneventful. Standoffs are mounted permanently to the case and were in all the correct locations for my Asus A7N266VM micro ATX board. Without the drive carrier installed, there is plenty of room to get all the case LED's, switches, USB, microphone, and headphone connectors hooked up.
As pictured in the accompanying pictures, all of the following components were installed in the PC Toys SimpleMax 101:
ASUS A7N266VM mATX motherboard
AMD Athlon XP 1700+
ATI Radeon 9000 video card
Thermaltake Orb cooler
512Mb 2700 DDR
20 Gig Western Digital hard drive
Lite-On DVD rom
Floppy drive
 
Once power is hooked up to motherboard, next came loading up the drive carrier. I installed a (somewhat dusty) DVD player and floppy. The optical drive mounts to the carrier using the bottom holes on the drive. The floppy mounts to a plastic spacer and then the spacer mounts in the second optical drive bay. The hard drive piggybacks on the back side of the floppy/second optical bay.
The carrier has two pins and two half moon shaped locks on it. First, the pins are aligned with slots on the case and then the carrier is rotated into place engaging the locks. I was very impressed with the fit of the carrier. Two screws secure it to case after all the drives are hooked up to motherboard.
 
With the carrier installed and swung out, the ata cables and power can be installed. The space behind the carrier is great for routing all the cabling out of site. Then it was time to rotate the carrier into final position. This is where the tight quarters of the mATX case became a small issue. The carrier wouldn't go into position with a video card installed. The outside corner of the card hit the carrier. So I had to remove the Radeon 9000, secure the carrier, and reinstall the video card. There was only 1/2 between the carrier and card with carrier in place. Not a big deal, but a video card that is longer will pose some space problems.
Final Build and Cooling Concerns:
With the side panel installed with the included thumb screws, I began wondering about cooling. Simple describes this case as having some special cooling setup. In the picture below they show the power supply getting air from the case and blowing out the back. The two 60mm rear case fans are shown bottom one blowing in and the top one blowing out. This would, in theory, take hot accumulated air from the top of the case and vent it out. Sounds like an adequate solution for a micro computer running stock. I wouldn't attempt any overclocking with this case, but thats not its purpose. There is plenty of room for almost any heatsink that would fit on a micro ATX motherboard.
Please read on to page three for more on the PC Toys SimpleMax 101 mATX Case... Next.
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