Finally got it mocked up and wanted to give my initial impressions. Since I am waiting on parts I'm not going to be building in it just yet. Many apologies for the late review and still delayed assembly. My node 202 is still chugging away and I can't wait to deep six that thing.
*NOTE- This is a preproduction sample and not indicative of the finished product. Keep that in mind when reading.
Overall Appearance- I was initially pretty impressed with the general appearance of the parts. As I messed with it I started to notice some minor blemish's around some of the corners in the what I assume is a powder coat. Mainly around things like the holes in the side and top cover, one or two rough corners, things like that. I'm not concerned with it because I got a good deal with the understanding that preproduction is what it is. I like the black, its a great compromise with getting the worlds coolest color without having to endure it collecting fingerprints with its semi-rough satin texture. Good call on this front.
Assembly- This is were things got interesting. Since no instructions were included (didn't expect any) I was basically using everyone else's photos as general guide of what goes where. The one part that gave me the most trouble, and imagine will be a bit of massive PITA is the top hat. Its not immediately clear that the top bar needs to be swapped out and after much cursing and head scratching I finally figured it out. Not blaming my own stupidity on the design, but I feel there could be something easier with respect to the top hat. Maybe including thread holes on the top of the bars already in place or changing it so that it slots in and screws in without having to remove said bar. I only say this, since it will make building this whole thing in stages a bit easier.
Speaking of thread holes, my particular example of the case needed a bit of elbow grease to get everything to line up. This is ok to some extent, but I wonder what the bending and tension that i potentially will put on say a motherboard might have in the short or long term life of the board. Plus its a bit maddening with the amount of various screws that need attention to tighten one down and then realize you have to loosen it slightly to get the other to give you enough play to thread them both. Maybe jogging out the holes a bit up/down in final production and giving them more of an oval shop if this part of the assembly can't be mitigated easily would help people more easily assemble units that might be a bit off in spec. Trouble with these small cases is it doesn't take much and once the tolerance stacking starts in one area its going to create havoc with the rest of the case.
Thats all I have for now. Should have the parts in a week to 8-9 days from today (hopefully the two box's with my Black Friday goodies all arrive at once).
Overall, once I got it all together it looks quite impressive. I'm amazed at how small it is, even with the top hat installed. Unfortunately I didn't get all 4 of the magnetic strips for the metal side covers. But I might try an experiment with the 1080 with the metal grill and the glass cover were all the RGB bling will be. Curious to see what the temps will be.
