Gadgetory

now the name of this case lends itself to some pretty obvious jokes and just like Logan I'm going to go for the most obvious one hey look on the Hadron Collider so when we open up the case the first thing we find is an accessory box which contains I guess a power cable because this is a high-end case with an integrated power supply more on that later we've also got a manual oh and whatever I threw over there I believe that's an EVGA case badge and finally oh cool we have some little like cable management clips and some screws for mounting a five and a quarter inch slimline optical drive as well as a three and a half inch slash two and a half inch sled and some SATA cables and finally I like a hadron tatoos sticker you think next up we've got a very nice packaging nice construction paper I mean cardboard whatever this stuff's called on the outside and then some nice clothes sell soft foam to keep it nice and safe while it's being transported and then finally oh okay well we're gonna have to take marks off for that they're you know protective you know paper around the outside of the Hadron isn't very strong actually we're not going to take any marks off of that whatsoever because it is extremely well packaged which is very unusual for a new case manufacturer because this is EVGA 'z first computer case they've done lots of other computer hardware over the years but never a chassis before a couple of small Corrections there guys yes that was a case badge that I threw all the way across the room and this is for the slimline slot-loading optical which isn't necessarily five and a quarter inch it's just to slim the line slot loading optical and it goes right about here so on the right-hand edge we've got the spot for that as well as a headphone and microphone jack and two USB 3.0 ports we've also got perforations along the bottom edge of the case a perforations along the entire bottom of the case as well as a nice little rubber foot at the back and then a larger more raised metal piece at the front that actually gives it a bit of a like an upward tilted posture once the case is actually put down on the desk then on the left hand side we've got a full side panel window that will reveal the unexceptional cable management characteristics of this particular case only this side panel comes off at all and in fact the other side panel doesn't so all of your cable management will be done with zip ties and just trying to keep things you know out of the way of each other as much as you possibly can moving on to the top of the case the entire top of the case is again perforated and if there's anything EVGA understands it's the need for airflow to cool the other components in your system particularly modern hot running graphics cards so we're going to go ahead and reveal that under that perforation which unfortunately doesn't have dust filters although it doesn't make that much of a difference to me if you're using it for exhaust oh yes to 120 millimeter fans that are able to take air in from the bottom of the case which is where I showed you before there's lots of ventilation lots of perforation and then exhaust it out the top of the case actually quite like this design the case overall feels solid without feeling heavy and this is something that again is unusual for a first time case maker you know you usually expect them to cheap out on things like packaging not understanding the importance or chief out on the construction and the metal quality and that hasn't happened here at all at the back of the case we've got two tubing holes if you want to run external water cooling as well as two PCI slots where you can have a single expansion card and it'll be dual slot because it's a graphics card and then you're pretty much good to go finally we end up here yes the power supply that I mentioned before 80 plus gold efficiency slim power supply with a 500 watt capacity this is what is enabled EVGA to achieve this extremely unique form factor here because unlike Silverstone's approach which is usually to go with sfx the slim power supply allows them to really control the vertical height of the case in fact it's only about 12 inches by 12 inches by 6 inches wide so we're going to go ahead and open it up and discover something that has bothered a lot of other reviewers but I personally give exactly zero cares about and that is the fact that the powder coating doesn't extend to the inside in all places you can see that there are places where it is actually visible that there's there's bare metal here these are things that you will never see especially once you actually have a system installed in the case and it's the kind of thing that I really tend to not stress out about very much at all once we're inside we can also find all of the things that are inside so the inside features I'm going to start with the thing that is devastating and terrible to me and then we'll move on to the things that I think are great and that is this right here there's no CPU cut out and instead EVGA has opted for their own proprietary layout that's going to be compatible with their own mitx motherboards which quite frankly not a whole lot of people are using so I really would have rather seen the other side panel open up and I would have rather had the flexibility to install a cooler from the back there's actually a fair amount of room in the case for a decent sized tower cooler although you won't be putting something like an NHD 14 in here for drive mounting options we have these two caddies which are capable of holding either a two and a half inch or a three and a half inch drive if you got creative you could pull these out and you could probably cram a whole whack ton of SATA two and a half inch drives in there and then this third slot right here is for that slimline optical drive moving on down we've got the front panel IO connectors so there's USB three I would have loved to see a black cable for this but I do like that it's flat it's a ribbon cable as well as HD audio and power switch and power LED there is no reset switch and there is no drive activity LED on this particular chassis followed by the power supply wires so these I guess the benefit of having a custom power supply built just for your case is that you can have all the wire links make sense so that the cables can be easily managed so the 24 pin for example looks like it can be easily checked over here you can run some twist ties through all these perforations on the drive cage here again another smart touch from EVGA enabling lots of of passive airflow to be drawn over the drives by these fans as well as the active airflow right up here just absolutely love that and so you can sort of cable tie that to that and put that where it needs to go and then you look by contrast at the graphics card harness which is extremely short and obviously designed to just plug directly into in up to ten and a half inch graphics card right here and you can see that they've fought it out quite carefully SATA connectors they provide only two because in theory you can only really have two SATA drives in the system but then they give you four more auxiliary standard for pin molex --is so you can adapt those to whatever else you happen to need depending on what you are doing with the case so overall what would I say about this it's a great first try in fact it's a good case great first try though they've missed a couple small things I mean I think the powder coating issue that other reviewers have complained about is one thing missing the CPU cut out is another for me but they've also really nailed a few things like the overall build quality the quality of the packaging so your system is going to arrive in one piece if you have something pre-built with this or even your case is going to arrive in one piece if you order one as well as the inclusion of an extremely high quality power supply that can handle any mitx system that you can put in here plus something like a GTX 780 Ti without any trouble I think they've got a lot going for the Hadron air thank you for checking out my unboxing and overview of the Hadron air from EVGA don't forget to subscribe to Lynas tech tips for more unboxings reviews and other computer videos