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Soltek Qbic EQ3501 915G Cube - PAGE 5
Andy Zen - Monday, February 7th, 2005

Installation, part 2

Here you see the 300W power supply provided, as well as the other end of the wireless antenna. The antenna comes preinstalled, as does the ATX connector. 300W is high-end for a SFF, but is not surprising due to the extra 5.25 bay and rising power requirements of Prescotts.

For some reason, Soltek decided to place the ATX connector behind the RAM slots at the front of the case, which causes quite a bit of clutter once you include the IDE and front panel headers. The thick ATX cable also interferes a bit with hard drive installation on the bottom bay. The edge of the drive bay likes to catch onto the ATX cable - the ATX cord should probably be taped down or routed somewhere else to get it out of the way. You REALLY have to push the drive in to make the whole thing work.


Here is another angle of the drive bay and the problematic 3.5 inch bay. The ATX cable is evidently blocking the hard drive from being installed easily. It will work though, just tougher than it could have been.

There is no change in installing 5.25 inch drives. Long drives are still a pain to install, and all drives over 8 inches deep will have difficulty fitting in. However, most drives these days are about 7 inches, which is plenty of space to spare.

Closing the system was surprisingly a chore. Perhaps partially caused by the new plastic shell, getting the cover back on was quite difficult. With the old metal cover, you can see when the case doesn't line up - with the plastic shell on top this cannot be seen.


Article Index

1.Introduction
2.Appearance & Accessories
3.Features
4.Installation, part 1
5.Installation, part 2
6.BIOS and Overclocking
7.Test Setup and Benchmarks 1
8.Benchmarks 2
9.Noise and Conclusion

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