MGE XG Dragon Case Review - In go the components and the video card
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In go the components
At this point, there was not much left to add to the computer. I needed a cdrom, a hard drive, and a video card.
The Dragon case has 10 slots, separated into 3 distinct zones. The first zone is the 5.25" zone, which is good for installing up to 4 cdroms and other large devices. The second zone is the floppy zone, where you can install up to 2 floppy devices. The first two zones have bay covers on the front of the case, so all 6 slots could use devices that can be access from the front. The final zone is the hard drive zone, where you can install up to 4 3.5" hard drives.
This case included custom tool-less mounting brackets. There are enough for each zone to fill each available slot. Here’s a shot of me getting ready to secure my cdrom.
Once your drive is lined up, you just push in and turn to lock your component into place. I did this for my cdrom and harddrive, and was ready to move onto the video card.
The video card
The Dragon case and power supply are PCIe ready. This is a good thing, since I have a PCIe video card to go in here. My card does not, however, need the additional power direct from the power supply, so I did not need to use that power lead.
As listed in the specs, this case has a tool-less system for your add-on cards as well. As you add cards to your system, you slide a clamp up to install/remove, and then back down to secure them in position. Heres a couple shots of the tool-less clamp open and closed.
To be honest, when I installed my PCIe video card, I could not get the tool-less system to properly secure the card. When I put pressure on the card from the outside, as I had to in order to attach a monitor, the card would move around too much for comfort. Based on this fact, I actually removed the complete tool-less part from the case and used a standard slot screw to hold my video card in place. It’s nice that MGE thought to leave the screw holes available for such a purpose.
Now that everything was ready to be hooked together, I thought I would focus on the power supply for a few moments.
Next: The power supply >>
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