Assembly

Installing the motherboard is done by traditional means, with the use of spacers and screws. You may need to reach in through the top of the chassis if you don't have a screwdrivers that is compact enough. Installing a 140 mm top-blow cooler is easily done, and you should also easily be able to fit 140 mm tower variants within the chassis. As you can see, I have fed all chassis, USB 2.0, and Audio cables down one line, like an umbilical cord to the motherboard, which seemed to be the cleanest solution without potentially blocking off the 5.25" bay. Large graphics cards will also easily fit, but you will have to sacrifice the 3.5" slot as you won't be able to access the PCIe power plug(s) of such cards otherwise.


Installing a 3.5" drive within requires no tools or screws. Simply pull the tray of your choice out. It may be pulled apart for the storage device's insertion. Once in place, slide it in and you are done.


While you may install SSDs and traditional 2.5" drives into the larger trays, the ideal solution would be to equip them with rubber rings and screws and slide them into the special bays on the floor of the chassis. Preparing these drives is supposed to take a screwdriver, but you may also use your fingers because of the rubber rings.


However, installing an optical drive definitely takes a screwdriver. Inserting an optical drive, however, is done the normal way. You have to free the bay first, before sliding the drive in and securing it with the supplied screws.


The chassis is pretty compact, so you will have to watch the length of your power supply. We used a compact Seasonic unit in our review, and there is plenty of space left, but those using modular units may have to pre-connect all leads as there is no way to reach them otherwise.


With everything installed, the DS Cube's top compartment makes a very nice and clean impression, which is achieved by hiding the cable mess inside the enclosure's lower half.

Finished Looks

To let you know your computer is up and running, a blue LED within the power button starts glow once the side panels have been re-applied and the DS Cube has been turned on. The black optical drive is in stark contrast to the bright blue color of the chassis itself, but it does not look bad. In terms of noise, well, there is very little. The Aerocool DS Cube's solid panels do a great job of encapsulating sound.


Every connector in the rear is easily accessible, as they are flush with the chassis' frame. Looking through the window, you don't see any of the cables below, which leaves you to stare at all of the glorious hardware instead. As the graphics card is rather large and odds are users will install gaming gear inside the DS Cube, most builds will only allow for the GPU to be fully visible. This is fine and a nice show of what graphics power you have under the hood.