As always, I like to report the clearance behind the motherboard tray for bundling cables. I hadn't mentioned this before but many thanks to 'ehume' who frequents OCN/Vortez he was the one who pointed out this would be a good thing to include in our case reviews. It's nice to have feedback from our readers and we would always encourage this.
The clearance behind the motherboard tray is approximately 0.8cm. This may not seem like a great deal, but remember there is greater space at the top and sides of the motherboard tray should you need extra clearance. The side panel fitted on without any problems at all, the thick 24-pin ATX motherboard cable presented no problems in this regard.
Clearance isn't fantastic behind the motherboard tray
Due to the HD 6990 having PCIe power connectors on the outer edge this is unfortunately in the exactly the same position the middle pillar resides. So with this particular graphics card installed, we have to remove the pillar that runs down the middle of the HPTX Tank.
Middle pillar touches PCI-e connectors on HD 6990
To remove this pillar you will need to have the provided Allen key, you cannot remove these screws and many others within the HPTX Tank with just a screwdriver. I'm not entirely sure why Cubitek have chosen to go down this avenue, it seems very strange. Common sense would suggest using the traditional cross-head screw is standard and most frequently used. For the average consumer, loosing this tool would mean a trip to a tool shop.
Removing the pillar reveals some terrible, metal-on-metal scratching that could easily be avoided by simply attaching some soft rubber to the inside arm of the pillar. For such a high-end case like HPTX Tank and the quality of materials used, I would have expected Cubitek to take a little more care for small, obvious things like this.
Scratching left from the removed pillar - metal on metal
Behind the motherboard tray you can see that threading cables through is very easy. Lots of space and plenty of cable management holes. The CPU backplate cut-out is very forgiving - for the AM3 socket see in the picture below, there is more than adequate space to remove the CPU coolers without having to remove the motherboard.
Large CPU cooler backplate around the back
