Inside - details Pt 1
Looking in more detail at the inside of the chassis reveals some of the features that make the 690 stand out.
At first, we thought the people in the factory had forgotten to include the obligatory bag of screws but a glance at the rear of the 5.25in bays reveals what we were missing - and a rather clever and convenient arrangement it is, too.
Look at side of the 5.25in bays and you'll see that the screws come pre-attached. Two different types are grouped together and labelled appropriately. They're fitted on each side of the bays, giving a total of 20xM32 screws for optical and floppy drives and 20x6-32 screws for the motherboard and hard drives.
The generous helping of screws is provided despite the bays being tool-less. The 5.25in bays have tool-less clips but some of the screws might be used to hold them more securely for transit - just as can be done with the 3.5in drives below.
Hard drives down below are held in simple flexible plastic trays featuring four rubber-ringed pins that fix into the screw holes on standard 3.5in drives.
But each tray also has a single hole so that a screw can be used to hold the drive more securely in place.
With five trays, the average user - and most power users - are well catered for, though, of course, additional hard disks can be fitted in the 5.25in bays higher up.
