Assembly Procedure
We started by screwing the motherboard in place with the CPU pre-installed. Then, the cooler base was secured on the backplate, using the cut-out behind the motherboard to hold it in place. The NH-D12L chromax.black was then bolted in place. Admittedly, we did this too early, and we have to report that after carefully going through the instructions again, I noticed that HYTE suggests, “Complete as much cable management as possible before installing CPU cooler.” There is not as much space as expected so that you can do only so much. The fused front I/O pins were very handy in this case.
It’s a bit weird that the front I/O cables find their way inside the chassis from the bottom. In addition, they have to travel over your motherboard to reach most of the connectors. We would like to see a more elegant solution in future chassis of similar size.
Next, we plugged in the necessary cables for the PSU before installing it, as doing that inside the chassis is practically impossible. At first, we were afraid our EPS cable was too short, but it turned out the length was just right!
Installing the GPU was by far the easiest step, as it dropped right in. There were no riser cables, and there were no weird movements to get it to fit. But keep in mind that our GPU is a dual-fan one.
Some of you might have noticed we did not install any fans. This was a conscious decision. To begin with, installing 80mm fans on a chassis beside you on a desk is a bad idea since most 80mm fans are on the noisier side. The Noctua fan on the cooler will be adequate in this case, given our build’s open design and ample air availability. If you decide to build an FPS generation machine, this might not be the appropriate chassis.
