Accessories and Getting Inside:

   The YY-0221 comes with quite a lot of accessories, many of which are made of metal, making the box holding them feel quite heavy. Included are 6 sets of drive rails and 6 drive shields, one of each which is already installed inside the case. Also included is a baggie of screws/stand offs, several tie wraps, the stick-on feet (if you don't want to use the casters), two 3-4 pin adapters (for the fans), a metallic ferrite ring (for wire management or EMI reduction?) and two keys for use with the door lock. You also get some clear sticker icons, similar to the pictures found on the included ATX I/O panel; but since the ATX I/O panel already as them, the inclusion of the sticker was somewhat of a curiosity. The ATX I/O shield itself is a pretty standard one, though newer motherboards are starting to have the audio ports mounted at a right angle to the motherboard's PCB instead of parallel.

   Getting into the case is pretty easy; there is a grip underneath the front panel that allows you to get a good grip on it, and then all you have to do is pull the front panel forward and it comes off fairly easily. Having the case on casters makes this easier, as it provides some room between the case and the floor, allowing you to get your hand in easier. Otherwise, you'll have to position the front of the case on the edge of a table or, if it's on the floor, tip it backward some.

   As you'll note in the third picture below from the left, the door lock is a simple latching device; as mentioned before it only prevents the door from being opened, and the rest of the case can still be accessed despite the lock's state. The front panel is held in place by 7 metal pieces, along with several other plastic pins that keep the front panel from moving; the metal pins were a welcome sight, as they're less likely to break than plastic pins, offering more security and peace of mind to the end user, who won't have to worry about ordering a replacement part in the future.

 

Lots of accessories.	Front panel comes off easily.
Door locks by way of a latch.	Front panel held in place by metal pins and metal parts.

  Once the front panel is removed, you get an idea of what the case is really like. In the lower left of the case you can see a mount for a 120mm intake fan; this fan pushes air over the motherboard area. The two external 3.5" drive bays have shields in place, as does the first 5.25" drive bay, but the remaining five drive bays are empty, filled only by the abundant wires of the PSU. Any drive shields you mount must be attached to the drive rails, just like a normal drive would be, before fitting them into the drive bays. You can also see the five included LEDs a little better here.

   On each side of the front, three screws hold each side panel in place. After these screws have been loosened or removed, the side panels swing out, and then can be removed. You can sort of see the hooks on the side panels in the third picture below, which allow the side panels to swing out when they are inserted into slots/holes at the back of the chassis. Overall, I like the door-like feature of the side panels, as in my opinion, they make opening the case a little easier. This is especially the case when the side intake fan is taken into account; it's easier to deal with the power cabling going to the fan here when the side panels swing out like doors rather than sliding out and being removed, as is the case with most cases.

 

Front of the chassis.	Side panels swing out.
Hooks form a crude hinge for the side panels.	Motherboard side interior.

  Both side panels will need to be removed if you're going to install a system into the case, because the left side houses the motherboard while the right side houses the drives. Looking at the motherboard side, there is ample room to fit most any ATX-style mobo here; this was no accident as many server motherboards are of the extended ATX style, making them quite the space hogs.

   As you'll have to tip the case on its side to install a motherboard, this can be a little awkward as the case is so wide. There are two ways you can pass data cables and other wires through to the other side to reach the drives. Firstly, the square hole in the motherboard tray is ideal, as it's near where the IDE/FDD connectors are on most motherboards; however this hole isn't too big and with larger motherboards, it can be covered up, at least partially, limited its effect.

   The hole's edges, are however fairly blunt and not sharp. The second way is over the top of the motherboard tray; the tray doesn't come in contact with the top of the case, leaving about an inch all the way along the tray to slide cables over and to the drive side. This isn't the most ideal method but it may be the best available in some situations. One thing I noticed is that with earlier versions of the case, the space for passing cables through to the other side was much larger, especially with the version reviewed at ProCooling.com. Why Yeong Yang chose to change this is questionable. The motherboard tray is not removeable, but since the motherboard is separated from the drives, this isn't much of a big deal.

 

Drive side interior.	HDD bays: 4 cages holding 2 HDDs each.
5.25" drive bays.	HDD cages each held in place by 4 screws at the back.

  The drive's side of the case is much more interesting. At the front of the case, you can see the six 5.25" drive bays and two 3.5" external bays. This amount of drive bays ought to be more than enough; you could easily mount a drive cooler up front in one of the 5.25" drive bays for additional cooling and still have enough room for a DVD, CD-RW, DVD burner, LCD and fan controller. All drives or 5.25" devices must be mounted with drive rails, and while this isn't the ideal solution when it comes to devices like LCDs and fan controllers, which only use the front screws for attachment, the drive rails here differ from others. They don't use clips to hold the drive unit in place, and instead are secured to the case with screws. You can see this in the second picture below, where the drive rails are holding a drive shield in place. While this method requires more work than a clip system, it's more secure and better for mounting different types of 5.25" devices. The external 3.5" drive bays just use the direct mounting method where drives are just screwed into place, which is normal.

   There are four HDD cages, each of which holds up to two HDDs, for a total of eight HDDs. As this is a case meant for servers, this type of drive capacity is needed; for home systems this is more than enough and allows you to stagger your drives for maximum cooling, even if you have many of them. As you can see, the two 92mm exhaust fans have been positioned right behind the HDD cages, to allow them to remove air and promote airflow through the HDD area as the fans exhaust hot air. This is an ideal setup, as you no longer will have to mount an HDD in a 5.25" drive bay to get some cooling on them. However, removing the HDD cages is a bit harder; on the back of the case, four screws hold each drive cage in place, and you'll need to remove all the screws before taking out the drive cage to mount a HDD in it. This can be very troublesome, and I would have preferred a tool-free solution in this area. As it is right now, the cages are not ideal if you're upgrading or changing drives.

 

External 3.5" drive bays.	Drive rails screw into position.
PSU mounts the right way so that the 2nd fan faces upwards.	EPS12V PSU wires.

  The included PSU has a second fan, as many do, and the case has the PSU mount fashioned in such a way that any second fan will face upwards, making the setup good; it wouldn't do much good if the second fan faced downward. Although the PSU is mounted to a plate that then attaches to the case, a PSU must still be installed into the case by inserting it from the inside; you cannot slide a PSU in from the back/outside. This isn't a major problem, but you can run into difficulties changing out a PSU in an existing system, especially if you have a drive in the lower 5.25" bays, because of the way you have to install the PSU in this case. Sliding the PSU in from the back would clear up some of these difficulties. As mentioned before, the PSU here was meant for server-type motherboards so I could not use it for testing, as I did not have an appropriate system.

Motherboard-side rear area.	Motherboard-side front area.
Cable pass-through	Front panel connectors.

  Going back to the motherboard side, we see that the rear does not have any exhaust fans; though there is a side intake that is mounted on the side panel, I would have liked to see an exhaust fan on the motherboard side. This is where the mod-ability (I made up that word) of the YY-0221 "Cube" comes in to play, as you could easily put a chimney fan on this side of the case to help in cooling. At the front of the case is an expansion card "stabilizer" (I don't know the proper word) that few of us will use. Unlike the situation with other cases, this stabilizer isn't removeable, and so it block a little airflow from any 120mm fan you put up front for intake. Lastly, the front panel connectors for the case are pretty much the normal set of, with many connectors for the multiple LEDs up front. It just seems kind of sparse compared to most other cases out there that have front access ports.

   Overall, this case was fairly easy to get into, but not the easiest I've worked with. It can be a little hard to get a grip on the front panel handle to remove it, but once that's done it comes off without any trouble. Overall, I found the build quality of the Yeong Yang Cube Server Case to be okay. While the case was strong as heck, and I had no doubts that this case could handle anything I could throw at it, even use as a chair, there were some shortcomings. For example, a lot of edges in the case were not folded over and hence were a little sharp. This obviously makes working the case less enjoyable, and I would have preferred if the edges were rounded, even if it did add some weight to the case.