Installation and Performance
When it came to installing our AMD test bench into the PC-10N I wasn’t worried at all that the main components would fit or not. With that in mind the ATX motherboard and long GTX 780 went in without a hiccup and with room left. That is without having to even worry about the hard drive cages; obviously there won’t be any cards out to cause any fitment issues. Where I did run into a bit of an issue was with the height of my 140mm Noctua cooler. Although it fits in the case fine, there is no way to fit this with the fan door as well.
When it comes to securing everything in the PC-10N all of your screws are in standard chrome finish and go well with the aluminum finish on the interior.
Remember I mentioned before that I was worried about the wire management with the PC-10N. When I installed my modular power supply and started getting everything wired up I found out quickly that I was right to be worried. First and unrelated, some of the cables from my power supply were too short causing me to have to run things directly over the top of the video card to reach. But along with that I also confirmed that the space you are given between the rails and the side panel isn’t enough to fit thicker cables like your 24 pin, even the 8 pin and PCI cables are a tight fit with no room for error. Another issue that I noticed when getting everything hooked up is the lack for any area to hide your cables. The Rail design means there isn’t a motherboard that runs all the way down behind your power supply. Without the ability to run all of your cables back behind the motherboard tray you end up with a very unclean installation, even if you put a lot of time into it, at best you will have clean exposed wiring.
Once I had everything installed and put back together. All that was left to do was get a feel for its performance. With the two 120mm fans on the front the PC-10N did a good job keeping things cool. As usual with an all-aluminum design like this, noise wasn’t out of control but it was more noticeable than in a steal case, similar to a more open air design. I couldn’t measure it, but I do think the limited air issue I mentioned before with the power supply due to the angled vents and the distance between the power supply and the bottom of the case did cause the PSU to be warmer. The light weight of the PC-10N does mean it will be easy to pick up and move around or pack up to take to a friends for a LAN. The only issue I noticed that would cause me any grief in the future was the easy finger prints. I would recommend in packing a microfiber cloth along with the PC-10N when you take it to events.
