BitFenix Colossus cont.

BitFenix has included five holes for water-cooling situated in the top rear in case you have an internal radiator. Installing hardware into the Colossus is relatively straightforward and we didn't encounter any noteworthy difficulties. The motherboard slotted into place with ease and there is plenty of room to attach cables and other components.

We found that even the tallest of heatsinks still had tons of headroom while extra-long graphics cards such as the Radeon HD 6990 also fit comfortably with room to spare. The fact that hard drives are mounted sideways conserves space and makes cable management that much easier because all the messy cables are routed directly to the side of the case.

Installing 3.5" drives was easy as the process does not require any tools or screws. The installation of 5.25" devices was also tool-free though we found the design a little fiddly.

The power supply sits in the bottom of the case and the Colossus supports all oversized ATX power supplies. The USB 3.0 ports in the I/O box connect to the ports located on the motherboards I/O panel and not the onboard header, which is a bit disappointing.

When lit up, the Colossus is a thing of beauty – assuming you're into blinding lights. Although we won't hesitate to call the design impressive, it's not something we'd want on our desk 24/7. That said, you can simply turn the lights off when the rave's over.

It's worth noting that we had an issue with the lighting in our review sample. Half the lights on the left door occasionally turned off and on at random. Unfortunately, BitFenix recycles their review units and the Colossus we received was in fairly poor condition. We can also conclude that the paint chips easily as there were many chunks missing from our sample.