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Exterior
Most of the GT1’s depth is designed to allow long graphics cards and big drives to fit at the same horizontal level, and the case even has nine 5.25” front-panel bays to allow installation of hot-swap backplanes, digital fan controllers, USB 3.1 breakout panels and the like. Those without a bay panel adapter such as the one included with ASRock’s Z170 Extreme6 are stuck with a pair of USB 3.0 Type A and a pair of USB 2.0 ports.
Arguments whether a USB 3.0 front-panel header can handle USB 3.1 Gen 2 transfers are mute, due to combined cable-length concerns. This prevents motherboard manufacturers from considering the front-panel header’s practicality for direct-plug devices such as Type-C thumb drives, though applying a “Gen 1” label to a Type-C front-panel port might be an option for case manufacturers. Until engineers can reach an agreement on front-panel Gen 2, we’re told that the only options are an old-fashioned I/O-panel extension cable hanging out the back of a case with a repeater on the port end, or a bay device.
Hiding around back, the GT1’s not-so-secret added features include a removable/reversible motherboard tray, a cover over the power supply, and an extension power cable mounting hole next to the power supply cover. Those latter two items hint to an internal power supply mount.
