With the install complete I can confirm that the Shinobi is a pleasure to work with, the interior boasts some fantastic cable management cut-outs and places to conceal cables. Something that I always like to see with case design is the inclusion of cable routing for P4/eATX. There is nothing worse than having to route the cables across the motherboard - it makes more sense for case manufacturers to allow you to route this cable behind the motherboard tray. With the Shinobi, BitFenix have included 2 gaps at the top of the motherboard tray for this and it works very well.
As you can see from the picture, the inside is very tidy and achieving this isn't very difficult thanks to the space and features inside Shinobi.
Install complete - great case to work with
Bundled with Shinobi is an accessories kit that provides you with a user manual for installation guidance along with an assortment of parts - cable ties, rubber feet, screws, and motherboard mounts.
The accessories kit that is included
In terms of clearance, installed inside Shinobi is the ZOTAC NVIIDA GTX 480 AMP! edition. This card fits inside the case no problem and even has 3" of clearance. So available here is up to 13" of space for installing a graphics card before it touches the HDD cage.
Plenty of clearance for high-end graphics cards
Over on the CPU cooler side of things, it is extremely tight. Installed inside the Shinobi we have the Noctua NH-U12P. This CPU cooler is 158mm in height. The side panel does fit without touching the top of the heatpipes but if the heatink was 1mm taller then getting that side panel on would prove a difficult task.
CPU Cooler clearance - max of 158mm in height
Switching Shinobi round we can see the cables that run behind the motherboard tray. Fitting the 24-pin ATX cable behind the motherboard tray is no problem at all, even though its thickness is challenging for the best of cases. As already mentioned the P4/eATX runs up to the top of the motherboard tray. It's great to see that BitFenix have included this, however minor a feature - many overlook it and I have reviewed countless cases that fail to include cut-outs for this cable.
CPU cooler backplate coverage is good, even though the backplate on this AM3 motherboard I have used in the installation is quite long.
Front mounted 120mm fan for intake
Around the back of the motherboard tray is over 1.5cm of clearance for concealing cables. Certain areas on the back of the motherboard tray are concaved so that you can fit even more cabling behind should you need to.
Clearance behind the motherboard tray
