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Hardware Installation & Test Configuration
A plastic bag containing various screws, zip ties, and a PSU mounting plate comes attached to the frame of the chassis with a twist tie. The bag also contains the manual.
The interior of the FSP CMT510 is very spacious for a mid-tower. This chassis looks small from the outside, thanks to FSP's clever design choices (among them, moving most of the hard drive mounts behind the motherboard tray). But you can install just about any build you can imagine in this chassis. The seven expansion slots allow for multi-GPU setups, with cards up to 400mm in length. And you'll have room to spare for radiators and all-in-one coolers (up to 360mm long) in the front of the chassis.
An opening in the upper edge of the motherboard tray allows for routing through the 12V motherboard power cable or fan wires, and a larger hole facilitates heatsink changes without removing the motherboard. There are no traditional pass-through holes in the motherboard tray for cable management. FSP has instead opted for a two-piece motherboard-tray design that offsets both panels a bit, creating a vertical slot for routing cables. This design also provides 32mm of space behind the offset panel; here, FSP has included two 3.5" or 2.5" hard drive mounting locations. The area directly behind the motherboard is a bit tight at just 13mm, but there is still enough room for the fan controller and two 2.5" mounting locations for SSDs.
While we are on the subject of hard drive mounting locations, the CMT510 can accommodate a total of six hard drives. Two 2.5” drives can be installed on the top of the PSU tunnel, and two 3.5” drives and an additional two 2.5” drives can go behind the motherboard tray. FSP has done away with traditional slide-out drive trays, opting instead for stamped steel trays that are fastened to the chassis via thumbscrews.
It's a surprise to see a budget-friendly chassis like this one include a total of four 120mm LED-lit fans connected to an LED lighting controller. The lighting switch allows you to cycle through a number of different illumination effects, including static color, RGB circle, RGB smooth cycle, flash three colors, and flashing white. On the cooling side of things, the triple 120mm intake fans feeding a single exhaust fan should provide more than enough airflow for everything from mild to wild enthusiast PC builds. We'll see how all that airflow affects system temperatures a bit later in this review.
Radiators and all-in-one coolers up to 360mm can be installed in the front of the case. CPU air coolers up to 165mm in height can be equipped in this chassis. This chassis can also accommodate graphics cards up to 400mm.
The CMT510 has more than enough room for modern power supplies. We installed everything from a small 650W power supply (87x150x140mm, HWD) all the way up to Thermaltake's Toughpower 1500W power supply (99x150x220mm) without any fitment issues.
Test Configuration
| Drivers & Settings | |
|---|---|
| Chipset | Intel INF 10.1.1.42 |
| CPU | 3.8GHz (38x 100MHz) @ 1.2V Core |
| Motherboard | Firmware 7A78v17 (07/03/2017) |
| RAM | 16-17-17-36 |
| Graphics | Maximum Fan for Thermal Tests | AMD Radeon Crimson ReLive 17.9.1 |
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