Gadgetory

well that's what you would think happened to this box I have no idea what happened to this box almond dropped it off and was like hey can you check out this case and I was like sure with somebody like eating the side of the box they said we don't know so we're gonna open this up and find out if in spite of the fact that this case has apparently been shipped to and from the depths of hell at least once whether it is in okay shape on the inside this is the Zelman z11 plus it is an ATX mid tower case with a front mesh cover for ultra cooling performance it supports up to seven system fins supports the bottom PSU installation and aperture for cable management really I think they mean cable management holes black interior coatings almonds powerful HDD cooling solution tool free hard drive installation spacious interior for installing up to two hundred and ninety millimeter or twenty nine centimeter video cards actual tuning side panel I think they mean windowed side panel supports two USB 3 ports front and bottom dust filters doing a half inch hard drive SST mount on the rear side of the motherboard tray tray place plate tray separate apertures for convenient CPU cooler installation I think they need a CPU cutout and three and one bracket provided rear tube apertures for liquid cooling systems somebody thinks that aperture is an appropriate synonym for hole in this case and you could make that argument but I don't think that that's really what they meant all right here we go so we've got a hard foam while it isn't my favorite it is extremely thick very robust and the case did by all appearances managed to arrive in one piece one thing came loose though so I'm just gonna check this out here okay so this is just a little guy that goes in the front right here that's a three and a half I think that has to be installed from the inside so I'm not going to try for too long at this because that will be boring for you to watch so we'll fix that after we'll just leave it up you know so this is the z11 plus this is actually kind of a slick looking case it looks to have a lot of spaces back there is the smoked side panel window so it is not a 100% clear it is for more of a dark and subdued look if you do put red lighting it looks really really good with smoked dark side panels like this we also have in terms of okay here I got to stay stay focused here it's late and I'm tired so take this off so that is protecting what appears to be a tray for storing like you know screws and I don't know like pocket change like SSDs you might happen to have lying around you could store them there um I know this isn't the first role problem right where am I going to store my SSD that's lying around um moving along we have two front USB 3 ports a reset switch a hard drive indicator LED to front USB 2.0 ports headphone and microphone jack and really business do anything no doesn't okay power switch right here and a power LED under the power switch now ventilation wise at the front we have almost a full mesh thing going on except where there are ventilation grilles so it's grills or it's mesh or its apertures whatever you want to call it there is a lot of ventilation on this case so here we can see a front 140 millimeter fan that is a filtered fan spot and it looks like this does come off give me a second here guys it looks like we're going to be able to take this off more easily once we get the case open so we'll have a closer look at that as well as their unique harddrive cooling solution which uses these vent holes here on either side to move air actively directly over your hard drive so the side panels are pretty run-of-the-mill steel construction with the plastic sort of aggressive car looking venting thing going on as well as the the bulging out window that actually serves only an aesthetic purpose but also a practical purpose because you can install very tall CPU coolers in this case without any difficulty at the back you see here that ok from the front it looks very more like with fewer holes in it and then from the back you can see that there is ample room for airflow coming from the inside of the case to be exhausted out the back at the back we actually see we've got a 120 millimeter cooling fan 7 PCI slots bottom mounted power supply and I think all of this was covered when I was checking out the specs on the box itself however here we are reiterating it because I need to buy time while I take off these screws take off the side panel so here we go that appears to be a 80 mm that appears to be an 80 millimeter exhaust fan which is pulling air directly from over the hard drives and then exhausting that out here very cool plugs in with a 4-pin molex peripheral connector over all side panel construction is actually fairly solid not bad at all alright once we oh you know what here I took these screws off so I'm sure to have that fall off if I don't do something with it now this one is also exhaust so both of them are pulling air from that front intake fan and then exhausting them out the case and this one also plugs in with a 4-pin molex peripheral connector and do two like this this plastic piece here once again it feels quite it's quite solid overall a unique design actually very cool alright so there is the front 140 millimeter fan that I was talking about and then here is the tool this hard drive installation mechanism so you just use these pull these out if you want to take out your drives in fact we should probably go grab a drive just so that we can show you assuming I have one lying around which apparently I do so if your probably if your first roll problem happens to be where to store the hard drives that you have lying around look is telling me something I don't know something about screws give me a minute all right so slick tells me this is how I do it I don't know if you can necessarily call this tool this but there you go you slide in like that and then this piece is pulled out in order to remove the drive you can also ah there we go put in an additional screw for added security if you're worried about the drive coming out however you will lose some of the anti vibration vibration dampening effects of the rubber mounts if you do actually happen to do it that way ah what else have we got here in terms of accessories so it comes with an 8 pin extender this is actually a phenomenal value add these cost anywhere from about five to ten bucks to buy so it comes with the case for a bottom mounted power supply that actually isn't even in that tall in the case so if you have a decent power supply you just use this and then like save one of these for a rainy day all right we got a couple PCI back plates including one that is set up for these USB 3 cables which plug into the back that's a little bit disappointing I've expect at some point they'll revise this case to use an internal header but for now it isn't using one we've also got all of our mounting screws a couple cable ties as well as a boatload of thumb screws that look like they would be useful for all kinds of things including mounting drives so these guys are threaded with fine threads guys so no I don't think you're I don't think you're right I don't think it's far that slick I think it's for mounting the motherboard I could be wrong though let's find out yeah I think these are actually for mounting the motherboard cool because all the standoffs are in here as well I actually really like the look of mounting the motherboard with thumb screws there's no reason you can't do it in any case but as long as you have screws that are threaded correctly for your standoffs but I think it looks for the sharp so there's a user's manual and let's get moving with the case itself here we go so in terms of the fans you can mount in this thing you ton of different options so there's the front fat there's the two of other fans that come with it to cool your hard drives there's also room for up to another two 120 or 140 millimeter exhaust fans up here on the top a 120 in the back a 120 or 140 with a filter so that's going to be an intake on the bottom there's your power supply fan which is also filtered that's good and then finally you can install another fan on the back of the on the back of the motherboard where your video card is so that will actually four okay this is interesting because for video cards that use aftermarket computers like this one where they actually blow a lot of the heat down towards your motherboard cooling the back of the board is something that could be very useful I've never seen that feature before so that's a that's an interesting touch wow what else we got here right all your included internal connectors so your front power switch and LEDs and all that whatnot whoo-ha as well as your internal USB 2 header and then your internal USB or rather your external USB 3 cables so those ones are going to go around to the back of the motherboard and plug in right there using that PCI slot pass-through we have a fairly large CPU cut out some pre-installed motherboard standoffs although you'll have to put in the rest yourself that's fine because this is pretty much what you need for ITX then 4ma TX or ATX you're going to go ahead and expand how many you have in there five and a quarter inch bays I actually never did count those we've got five of them with one of them would be three and a half inch adapter that that piece was missing from before these are all filtered so they have foam in them which will keep dust from accumulating from air that is sucked in through the front of the case overall construction is actually fairly solid considering what a value this cases though they haven't they haven't cheaped out on the on the overall build quality of it it feels very solid which means it may not be as much of a factor when it's just a case but once you load it up with a bunch of heavy hardware especially if you're going to ship it anywhere the cases that aren't built as well tend to show very quickly where the problems exist so if you are doing things like reinforcing the motherboard tray with these kinds of bends which incidentally also gives you a lot of different cable routing options are that Salman has incidentally given you cable routing options as well has all these different places to tie down cables it's those little nice touches that make a case much easier to work with and much more solid look at this look at all these cable hold downs these are more handy than you'd think because there isn't a ton of room on the back of this motherboard tray for cable routing so being able to lay everything down flat and cable manage it cleanly is going to be the difference between a tidy case with all the cables running up the back and an awful looking cable manage case with the cables running up the front I think that pretty much covers it so thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the Zalman z11 plus don't forget to subscribe to Ana's tech tips from law boxing's reviews and other computer videos slick burned me that's the SSD mount on the back of the motherboard tray that is not for a fan although you know you could put a hole in the other side panel and you could put a fan there if you really wanted to if you wanted to execute my well-intentioned plan of cooling the motherboard near the PCI slots better you could do that or you could just install your SSD here and run your cable around here to your motherboard and it would look very tidy and clean and that would be a good thing