First I unpacked the case and checked it out. As the reviews on NewEgg stated, the case is very well built, and the rolled edges are a nice plus so you don't slice your hands open.
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The hard drive cage is a particularly nice design. It is completely removable for easy access, and contains five trays, each with nice vibration isolation bushings to mount through.
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The power supply has tons of power connections, but of course it is short one SATA power connection for what I needed... I should have gone with an IDE DVD Burner (and I still might) and avoided eating up one of the SATA power and data ports for the DVD drive.
I first mounted the CPU, Heatsink, and memory onto the motherboard, taking advantage of the room on the dining room table (rather than cramped inside the case).
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The mother board went in very smoothly. Antec has labelled the stand-off holes in the case so that it is very easy to figure out where the stand-offs need to go for the size board that you buy. This one has so much free space left over after it is installed!
I attached all of the connectors for the front panel switches, lights and ports fairly easily... actually, I reversed the cables for the Power and HDD LED's, but those were quick fixes.
Next was the hard drives. I installed all four into the drive cage, but only chose to have one plugged in when I started the installation, for reasons that I will explain in the next post. The sound and vibration dampening features of this mounting system should make for a VERY quiet system!
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Last but not least I installed the DVD burner and plugged in the fans. I still haven't installed either of the after-market fans that I bought, because I want to see if the stock fans will be sufficient.
Next up is BIOS Set-up and Home Server installation. Stay tuned!
Update: Part two, the OS install, is available here.
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