The tempered glass side panel is held on with a standard set of four thumbscrews, and the opposite side panel relies on notches and rails. Neither system is exciting these days, but both work just fine on this case.

Inside, the layout could hardly fit the bill of a standard mid-tower any more. We also reviewed the Pure Base 500 from Be Quiet! today and were struck by just how similar the two are in layout. This isn’t a bad thing, and if nothing else it means novices will have an easy time knowing what’s what. Your motherboard, CPU, and GPU are installed in the primary chamber that has nothing in the way of airflow, while the PSU, cables, and drives are mostly relegated to behind the motherboard tray or below the PSU shroud, which is steel and non-removable.

Clearance levels are adequate for a chassis of this size. CPU coolers up to 160mm can be installed, which means certain flagships will be off the cards. You can also install 370mm-long graphics cards and PSUs up to 180mm deep. Getting the core hardware inside is hassle-free, and pre-installed motherboard standoffs help in this regard. PCI expansion covers rely on regular screws rather than thumbscrews, however.

There are four dedicated mounts for 2.5” SSDs. Two are directly behind the motherboard in the form of individually removable metal trays, each held in place with a captive thumbscrew – nice and simple. The others screw directly into the front portion of the elongated motherboard tray. They’re designed to face away from the glass, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to display them in the main chamber if you wished.

A further two 3.5” mounts (with support for 2.5” instead) are found in the form of tool-free plastic sleds that are themselves installed into removable cage in the usual position at the front beneath the PSU shroud. The total level of drive support is adequate for a case of this size and price.

The iCUE Lighting Node Core controller is mounted behind the motherboard tray as well. It has a USB 2.0 header for data connection and SATA 12V for power, sporting six RGB LED hub connectors, three of which are pre-connected to the LL120 RGB fans. The others can be used for other Corsair RGB fans, and the total number of connections matches the total number of fan mounts in this case. The controller is presented as a PCB without housing, which keeps the space it occupies down.

While not primarily designed for water-cooling, Corsair would be remiss not to include some level of radiator support given its large all-in-one product family. Indeed, 360mm and 280mm radiators are both supported up front, and there’s up to 35mm of depth available behind the front fans thanks to a cutout in the PSU shroud (HDD cage removal may be necessary). The roof is more limited, but 240mm radiators can still be installed here.

Cable routing is mostly well managed. There are grommet-covered routing holes to the side of the motherboard that are suitable sized, for instance. Corsair could have made it easier to thread cables through to the bottom row of motherboard connectors, however, and the holes on the upper side are also a bit tight. There are no Velcro cable ties, sadly, but there are plenty of anchor points to take advantage of with the supplied zip ties.