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Slipping off the side panel (be sure and get your energy levels up before replacing it, you'll need them) reveals a pleasingly clean interior. The chassis and motherboard choice make it really easy for Time to get this right. The motherboard has ports in all the right places for effective cable routing.
Power supply and case wiring are the stand out items here, both nicely routed out of harms way at the top and sides of that picture. As you can also see, the MSI bracket for the SoundStorm audio that sits above the graphics card, has its cable routed very neatly out of the way. While the hard drive isn't SerialATA, along with the natty cable that would bring, Time have done really well with the regular IDE ribbon routing, and nothing is blocked or hard to get to.
Here's a shot of the power supply cable retainer.
That holds the ATX wiring loop out of the way of the CPU, a good thing in a mid sized chassis, leaving plenty of room for CPU airflow. The natty cable retainer for the case wiring and card reader are also worth a look.
Lastly, a shot of the IDE ribbon and power routing, just for voyeuristic giggles.
The case seems to foster good airflow overall. The CPU fan is set to draw air away from the heatsink, and dump it directly into the path of the motherboard powered 80mm exhaust fan. There's space at the bottom front of the case for another 80mm intake fan, but it's not supplied. Nor does it seem to be needed in any event.
I'll take about noise levels later on.
Overall, I'm not a fan of the case much. I'd like to see a better specified steel or aluminium chassis, with a different colour or design, one that gives front access to more than a single USB port on a card reader. For the money you pay for an UltraStation XP3200+, I don't think that's an unreasonable request. It's nice inside, Time do a great job with the layout and cable routing, but the outside leaves a lot to be desired.
On to the other bundled hardware.
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