AZZA Fusion 4000 Review - PAGE 3

The predominant installation area has a roomy interior that can accommodate up to 8 HDDs, or 12 SSDs (configured as four 2.5" docks and eight 3.5" trays with 2.5" support), and multiple water cooling radiators. The Fusion 4000 also has 10 expansion slots that enable installation of up to 4-way SLI / Crossfire builds and up to 360mm of room for graphics cards. Support for 4-way GPU setups depend on the layout of your motherboard, but it should be available on most enthusiast offerings and with 360mm of space, even graphics cards such as the HD 6990 will fit with ease. Meanwhile the installation tray can easily accommodate any motherboard type including XL-ATX,E-ATX, Full ATX, Micro ATX and ITX.

The cable management system is also quite robust, as there are plenty of anchor points to tie down cables behind the tray. In total there are six cable routing holes found throughout the motherboard tray, optimally positioned to work with any type of motherboard installed inside the chassis. This will allow the cables to be routed in smarter and larger portions of these areas to allow for more efficient management. Each cutout utilizes high quality grommets.

The secondary installation area is located behind the two adjustable panels are the top of the case. These panels are opened via clips on both the left and right sides; when pushed toward each other, the panels unlock and can be lowered. Inside the top installation area is a small mounting bracket that can accommodate an ITX based system along with two 3.5/2.5" hard drives, a secondary power supply and two 5.25" external drives.

This area can also be customized to fit a water-cooling loop instead of an ITX based system once the hard drive cage is removed. This area can accommodate a 360mm radiator. This is the third area we have looked at that can support a radiator, so if you are looking for optimal water-cooling support the Fusion seems like it could be the strongest options available.

The two separate installation zones have their own external 5.25" drive bays. At the top are three bays, but note that the top bay occupies two slots. This makes it an ideal location for a dual slot fan controller or reservoir. The two bays below use a standard one-slot bay design, so they will easily accommodate any 5.25" external device. The lower installation area has four more external 5.25" drives bays, so in total the case can accommodate up to eight 5.25" external devices.

To secure the drive into the case, the user first removes one of the covers by pushing it outward from within the chassis; this can be done simply by removing the entire front bezel. After the cover is removed, the drive can be slid into the open bay and secured in place via thumbscrews on each side. To remove the drive, the locking clips on the inside of the case must be pressed to allow for removal of the screws, and ultimately the drive.

The Fusion 4000 uses an all hot-swappable design for installation of both SSDs and HDDs. At the bottom potion of the case, the Fusion 4000 can accommodate up to six internal 3.5" drives, or 10 2.5" SSDs. The SSDs can either be installed into small plastic enclosures that are located above the 3.5" bays, or they can be secured to the larger trays via screws.

All the drives are powered by a built-in circuit board located inside the chassis. Each board can power up to two drives via single 4-pin Molex connector, and each board also has two on-board fan headers.

The CPU retention area built into the motherboard tray is one of the largest we have seen. This will ensure the opening will work with virtually any motherboard on the market. As you can see, our test setup easily fit into the retention hole and there was no part of the bracket that was covered by the motherboard tray. While our test system included a LGA-1155 motherboard, the Eleven Hundred should accommodate most types of CPU and motherboard layouts including the latest Intel LGA2011 and AMD FM1 sockets.

There is also a secondary retention area on the motherboard tray that can either be used to route cables or access the CPU socket on non-standard motherboards.

The finished installation turned out extremely clean, and as you can see there was ample room for all of our high-end components. The spacious interior made it extremely easy to install our gear, and the cable management holes worked nicely as advertised, allowing all the cables to be routed behind the motherboard tray. Now that we have all our hardware in this beast, all that's left to do is see how it performs from a thermal standpoint.