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Installation

By no means is this a tool free case. Some high end cases try to remove the screwdriver for every possible situation, with some achieving it better than others. This does not mean the Centurion is a bad case - if you really wanted to make it toolless you could always just use thumbscrews in place of regular drive screws.

5.25 inch drives

This is where you need a screwdriver or a lot of thumbscrews. Due to the nature of the case with its stealthed bay doors, there's no easy way of implementing a tool-less solution without compromising the functionality of the bay doors. Like any cheapo ATX case, you slide in the drive and use a screwdriver to screw in the case. Nothing special here.

3.5 inch drives

The externally accessible drives are installed in the same way as the optical drives are. Slide and screw. The internal drives, on the other hand, use a rail system similar to the ones used for the 5.25 inch drives in the Thermaltake Soprano, among other cases. If you've been a long-time reader of our reviews, you would know that we like rail systems, a lot. In this case, the drives are installed painlessly, and even better, are also removed painlessly. Big thumbs up for a working design here.

Expansion cards

While the drives are installed easily, I'm not sure I can say the same about installing AGP/PCI cards. Coolermaster uses a round screwless clip. Unfortunately, it's not terribly intuitive, nor did it work well. How this works is that you squeeze the latch down until you can slide the plastic loop outwards. This worked for our AGP slot, but got stuck badly for a couple of our PCI slots. We would have like it if Coolermaster used a thumbclip like the Thermaltake Armor instead. Those clips worked far better and were a lot more intuitive.

There is space for the classic screws if you wish to abandon the funky clips. Props to CM for providing an alternative that could ease a lot of tension.