Building With The DRN-STN
Perhaps the most glaring of the DRN-STN’s shortcomings is a scarcity of 2.5” bays. The bottom panel can hold a drive, but some motherboard and power supply cable packs don’t have the necessary straight-ended connectors. Additional holes on the drive cage might have supported 2.5” drives, except that a lip on the bottom and a raised center on top prevent them from being mounted on either side. And the 3.5” drive rails don’t even support most 2.5” adapter trays, since their pins are spaced to fit only the outer holes of 3.5” drives.
All of that means there will be builders who have to buy different cables to fit a single SSD, and installing a second SSD means buying a longer adapter.
The DRN-STN also includes a screw-free add-in card bracket, though it doesn't work with many enthusiast-oriented graphics cards. That might have been an issue for a chassis purportedly aimed at gamers, except that the slot brackets also support screws. Problem averted!
The DRN-STN’s internal ATX chassis includes thumb screws only for the outer side panel. The inner side panel is removable with a screwdriver, and we wondered why the company didn't have more interest in providing greater access to the cable stowage area between the motherboard tray and side panel. The tray has a cable access hole; why wouldn’t we be encouraged to use it?
We had to go through several steps before that hole was useable with our eight-pin EPS12V cable. First, since the case’s access hole and our motherboard's connector are extra-close to a fan, the cooler had to be temporarily removed. Next, since the hole is narrow, we had to split our eight-pin power lead in two and slip each half through the hole sideways. Our apologies to anyone who doesn’t have a 4+4-pin cable.
If you can, on the other hand, take advantage of the case’s access holes, you'll be pleased to find space for nearly every cable, with tie-off points that could have further cleaned-up this already-organized installation.
With roughly 6.25” of cooler clearance, our 6.2”-tall Coolink Corator DS barely fits within the inner chassis’ steel panel. Remove the steel panel and you’ll get a fraction of an inch of extra space, with the visual benefit of full internal views. Or, remove the plastic window to make the inner panel’s fan mounts operational. Or, remove both to annoy the LAN partier sitting behind your PC with the din of two Radeon R9 290Xes cranking away in CrossFire.
