Installation

First thing first, I installed the motherboard. Installation was simple; secure the board with a few screws, and it's set. There are standoffs past the usual ATX ones, but these are for larger server motherboards.

Aside from the typical power and hard drive LEDs, the RPC-450 also features two additional LEDs to monitor network connections. Unfortunately, a NIC with the support for external LEDs is required, and the ASRock 4Core1333-Viiv doesn't support such a feature. The front panel also has a single USB port.

I installed the HighPoint RocketRAID 3120 in an available PCI-Express x1 socket to test out the chassis' installation. It was easy enough, and I much prefer old-fashioned, screw-in PCI slots than the newer clamp-down slots many companies are featuring.

Next, I installed the 5.25" drives. These bays have a special metal rail to hold them in place. Connect the rail, then slide the drive in.

The hard drives utilize plastic rails instead of metal. Installation was straight forward after installing the rails on the drives: they just slide in.

One issue I ran into was the installation of the rear exhaust fans. Since the case didn't come with two 80mm exhaust fans by default, I took to installing two fans from NorthQ. Unfortunately, they were slightly larger than average 80mm fans, so I was only able to install one fan.

After installing the RAM, CPU, and heatsink, the next and final step was installing the power supply. The StarTech.com 750W powersupply I'm using was designed for workstations and servers, so it fit the RPC-450 perfectly. The RPC-450 features an additional mounting area to hold larger powersupplies, such as the one in question, in place.

With installation complete, let's see how the chassis performs.