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About a year ago, I built a machine for video recording and DVD playback using the Cooler Master ATC-620 case. The case looks pretty good, and the quality is great, too. The only problem for me is that it is a bit large (I didn't pay much attention to the size before I bought it), and I had to partially remove the back panel of my cabinet to fit it in. Recently I got an Antec Aria case to replace the ATC-620. Below you can see the size comparison.
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Figure 1 |
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Figure 2 |
The Aria looks okay (I don't particularly like/dislike cube-style cases). It's much smaller, very quiet, and fits in my cabinet with lots of room to spare, so overall I'm pretty happy. However, because of its small size, the installation is a bit tricky. To fit all the components into the case, they have to be installed in a particular order. Here are some notes I took during the installation. (Click on an image to open a window with a larger image, and click again to close it.)
In the original machine, I had the following components.
Now I need to put all these into the small case...
The first thing is to install the motherboard into the case. Since my motherboard already has the CPU/HSF and RAM on it, I did the following:
The following pictures show what it looks like after completing these steps. (Note that in these pictures the CPU heatsink is already installed because I forgot to take a picture before that. I'll talk about the HSF next.)
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Figure 3 |
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Figure 4. The cable connection to the left of the CPU is the CPU fan connector. The black box is for fan speed adjustment. |
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Figure 5. Note it is easier to connect the ATX 12V connector (between I/O ports and the chipset heatsink) before PSU is re-installed. |
As you can see, the CPU heatsink and the motherboard IO ports are very close to the bottom of the power supply. Installing the motherboard will be quite difficult if the PSU is not removed first. Similarly, if the CPU HSF is not removed, it will be quite difficult to re-install the PSU.
The next step is to install the CPU heatsink/fan. Before I bought the case, I read the article here, which mentions that some HSFs are too tall and will be blocked by the PSU. I was worried that the Intel stock HSF might be too tall, so I bought the HSF used in the article, Zalman 6500AlCu-B. It turns out that the stock HSF also fits under the PSU. However, since I have to remove the HSF when installing the motherboard anyway, and the Zalman is likely quieter, I decided to install the new HSF.
Unlike the stock HSF, the Zalman heatsink and fan are installed separately. The heatsink is already installed in the figures above. To install the fan, the adjustable fan bracket provided by the case must be used (the one that comes with the HSF doesn't fit). The bracket consists of two pieces. The fan is attached to the rail on the small piece, and the large piece is attached to the PSU. First, attach the small piece to the rail on the large piece using two screws as shown below.
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Figure 6 |
Note that these two pieces can be assembled in different ways (e.g., the rail on the small piece can be near the left, center, or right), and the manual doesn't say much about installing the bracket. There are actually two very important issues here.
Since I only have two hard drives, the first issue is not a problem (although only the bottom drive bay can use the special "noise-reducing" screws that come with the case). To address the second issue, the position of the small piece in Figure 6 should work. So now we can install the bracket and then the fan.
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Figure 7. Before installation. |
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Figure 8. Bracket installed. |
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Figure 9. Fan installed. |
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Figure 10. Connect fan to the speed control. |
This case allows four expansion card slots, so there should be no problem for my AGP card and two PCI cards. However, two things should be noted (let's number the slots from 1 to 4, starting with the AGP slot):
Therefore, I first install the AGP card and one PCI card on slots 1 and 2, as shown below.
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Figure 11 |
The other PCI card will have to wait until the drives are installed.
Installing the drives into the drive cage is quite straightforward. First install the 5.25" drive in the 5.25" bay, and then the two 3.5" hard drives are installed on the two side bays.
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Figure 12 |
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Figure 13 |
Note that I use the hard drive on the left as primary-master, the hard drive on the right as secondary-master, and the DVD drive as the secondary-slave. Therefore, the hard drive on the left will be on its own cable, and the other two will share a cable. Now I need to put the drive cage back into the case. Before doing that, the IDE cables and power cables for the drive need to be "arranged", as shown below.
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Figure 14. The round IDE cable (which comes with the case) is used for secondary IDE, and the regular IDE cable is for primary. The PSU has three power cables for drives. I use the short one at the center (right next to the fan) for the 5.25" drive, and the two long power cables to the left and right will be used for the two hard drives. |
Note that due to the length of the cables, some can only be connected after the drive cage is installed. Arranging the cables as shown in Figure 14 will ensure that it won't be too difficult to connect them. Now let's put the drive cage back in.
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Figure 15. As the drive cage is being installed, we can see that the two sides of the bottom drive bay will be right next to the CPU fan. |
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Figure 16. Connect the cables for the drive on the right. Note that the direction here is the reverse of the direction in Figures 12 and 13, so this is the primary-master drive. |
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Figure 17. Connect the cables for the drive on the left. |
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Figure 18. Connect the cables for the 5.25" drive. |
Now that the drive cage is installed and the drives connected, the last PCI card can be installed. It might seem that the card is blocked by the side of the drive cage and can not be installed. However, given the right angle (as shown below), the card can be "slided" into position.
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Figure 19. Slide the card inside the side of the drive cage. |
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Figure 20. Install the card into the PCI slot. |
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Figure 21. Install the cover on top of the card slots. |
Finally, arrange the excess cables (e.g., USB and FireWire) inside the case, put the top and side panels back, and it's done!
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Figure 22. Finished! |
If you are about to use the Aria case to build a machine, I hope this helps.
Last modified: Sat May 1 14:21:10 EDT 2004 using