A Closer Look - Inside

Gaining access to the interior is easily achieved by removing the pair of thumb screws holding each side panel in place. Before we dive into the inner area, a quick look at the fans reveals blue LEDs, white cable sleeving and the ability to connect them either to a 3-pin or Molex connector. These attributes are quite positive and the white sleeving looks quite good as well, however, the cables are quite short. Once the panel is completely removed, the interior reveals a traditional layout. There are no real openings in the mainboard tray to hide or route cables properly. Instead Spire has employed large plastic clips, which we have seen before and found lacking in strength to really make a difference. The fact that Spire has extended the mainboard tray with an additional metal strip and connected the two in such a way, that no cable could get past this point either. The Sentor 6004 makes a distinct and obvious workstation chassis impression at this point.


You may install a small fan with 10 mm thickness below the mainboard tray if you wish. This opening is not large enough to allow you access to the entire underside of the CPU socket area, so that exchanging CPU coolers with a backplate is not possible. Users wishing to exchange the cooling unit will have to take out the entire mainboard. A nice touch are the aligned screws down either side of the front drive bays. This way you will always have easy and quick access to these mounting materials and the number of screws should suffice, even when filling the chassis up with drive to the rim. There is very little space between the tray and side panel, which becomes fairly useless coupled with the fact that there is no reason to route or hide any cables here anyways.


The hard drive bays hold plastic trays for each drive. This system works quite well and does not require any screws or tools. Above that are the external drive bays with plastic locks. It will be interesting to see how these hold up.


Turning our focus to the rear, once again to the power supply bay, it is fairly simple besides the afore mentioned foam lining, as such a unit will rest on four foam bumps. Nothing wrong with this setup - on the contrary this constellation should work well and presents a simple installation process. Above that are the seven mainboard expansion slots. Spire has opted to use plastic locks for the expansion bays. I have seen these numerous times and such units do not tend to exhibit the strength to hold most expansion cards properly. Spire should seriously consider removing these and use traditional thumb screws instead. In the very top of the rear wall, is the 120 mm exhaust fan. It is of the traditional black variety and does not feature any LEDs.


You may install up to three additional fans within the case. One 120 mm unit in the floor on the included plastic clip and two of the same kind in the ceiling of the Sentor 6004.


Spire has also included two separate PCBs to plug fans into, which should reduce the cable clutter somewhat. We have seen the same PCB in the Xigmatek Elysium, with the only difference being that the connecting cable comes pre-applied. This pair of PCBs allow for up to seven fans to be powered with a single Molex connector and thus considerably reducing the cable clutter which is an excellent upside. The downside of this is the fact that you will lose the RPM signal and all cooling units will then run at full throttle. Considering the fact that Spire has included an impressive six fans, maybe a fan controller would have been a better choice and would certainly add more functional value for the user.


Before we dive into the assembly process, let us take a look at the cables. They are all of the standard variety - both for I/O and case functionality, so that you won't have to worry if they will fit. All cables are long enough to easily reach all the appropriate connectors on the mainboard.