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When we open the box of parts, the image at left is what we get. The purple things are the rails that get attached to 5.25in. drives that slide in to the 5.25in. bays on the front of the case. Everything else is screws of some sort, which we will use in some part of the case or another. Now let's have a closer look at this hardware and see what we have to work with. The image below and to the right is a shot of the motherboard anchors. These are brass conductive screws that have an opening on the top to receieve the screws that will hold the motherboard in the case. |
| These serve a triple purpose and it is extremely important that they are properly secured prior to installing the motherboard. Not only do they hold the motherboard in place but they also ground it out against static shock. They touch contact points on the motherboard to keeps it safe. They keep the motherboard from touching the back of the computer case. If the motherboard were to come in contact with the metal of the case directly, the whole board would short out. This makes these little brass anchors the most imporant pieces of hardware in a computer case. Without them, the computer would not work. Sometimes, cases also come with plastic anchors in addition to the brass ones. Ours does not. Let's move on. |
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The next piece of hardware in the parts box is the standard case screw. You can find these screws, pictured at left, in almost every single case ever made since the 1980's. This is the standard screw used to secure everything in a case, from the hard drive and CD-ROM, to the cover of the case it iteself. Sometimes these are even used secure the motherboard on the motherboard anchors. The most notible feature of these screws is their hexagonal head and grips on the underside of head. The hexagonal head allows them to be screwed in with a socket wrench rather than a phillips screw driver, so even it they get stripped, they can still be removed. The grips on the underside are |
| to keep them from coming out due to vibrations, making them very useful in securing devices that spin, such as a hard drive or CD-ROM. In our case, these will only be used to secure expansion cards and the power supply. We have special screws for everything else. |
| Moving on, we have the screws we will use to secure the motherboard to the motherboard anchors. These screws (pictured at right) are similar to the standard screws except that the head on this screw has a much lower profile, they have a shorter thread, and there are no grips underneath the head. The reason these are used to secure the motherboard is so the low profile head does not catch on anything on the motherboard and the lack of grip under the head of the screw prevents any accidental maaring of the circuity when the screw is being put in. These are also a very common screw and can be found in many PC cases holding the motherboard in place. Moving right along, we have the first of several custom screws that came with this case. These next screws are the screws that will hold our hard drives in place, once we have installed them.
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The screws pictured at left are the screws we are talking about. These screws are called thumb screws. The reason for this is obvious, they are meant to be screwed in using your thumb and forefinger. These particular screws are custom to this case. The screw itself has a half thread and half smooth cylinder on it. This is to accomidate the rubber shock rings that these screws must pass through to keep the hard drives in place. These screws do not have to be screwed in by hand. The head of the screw does have the slots in it to use a phillips screw driver so they can be made more than hand tight. It should be noted that whenever you encounter a thumbscrew in a computer, it is best to only make it hand tight. Thumb screws are usually included for two reasons, they are easy to use and the manufacturer does not want you to over tighten the screw. Please keep this in mind when installing these screws. |
| This covers all of the hardware that came with the case. The next and last piece of hardware that will look at are the motherboard and its various components. |
