BitFenix Comrade ATX Chassis Review

Interior

The exterior may be a little bland, but there is a lot more going on with the interior that should appeal to system builders. There is a good size CPU cooler mounting cut-out behind the motherboard, as well as a large cut-away behind the PSU area and more cut-outs around the right edge of the motherboard to allow for cable routing.

The 3 x 5.25″ drive bays come equipped with twist lock mechanisms to allow for quick  installation of your drives.

The top hard drive bays are dedicated 2.5″ (with screws) drives and the narrower width of these bays allows more clearance for you GPU. The bottom bays support both 3.5″ (tool free) and 2.5″ (with screws) drives, but both the top and bottom bays come equipped with slide out trays for easy installation. Ventilation holes on both sides of the drive bays should allow for a steady amount of airflow into the chassis from any front mounted fans (not included).

The pre-installed fan isn’t anything fancy, but it’s more than enough to get heat out of your system, just a shame that BitFenix didn’t include any fans on the front to bring air into the system. The top expansion bay comes open, although a screw-in cover is included in the box. The bottom six expansion bays feature snap-off covers which cannot be re-covered once removed.

Around the back there isn’t a lot of room for cable routing, so most cables will need to run from the PSU to the back of the hard drive bays and them up through the appropriate side cut-outs, unless of course you’re using fairly flat PSU cables.

The front panel can be taken off by tugging at the bottom of it, doing so reveals a 240mm clip-in and washable dust filter.

Behind the filter you’ll find room for two 120mm fans (not included).