A lot of the problem I have found was with cables having to run in the same area. As my HDD now sits the other way round with the cables at the motherboard side, it's much easier to get the brace into place. I have no problem with having a brace in general as it does stiffen the thing up a lot but trying to put something in to the front bay is a great feat of spacial perception. I still can't help but feeling that the blanking plate would be a lot better off clipping into the front panel rather than attaching to the brace.KyonCoraeL wrote:yeah that floppy brace is really bothersome. I put in a scythe 3.5" fan controller and the only way I could get it in is sliding it in thru the front.
I've sent Silverstone an email regarding some aspects of the design including the 3.5" bracket and the hard drive mounting. Other members here have had replies from them before which is better than you'll get from most manufacturers.
One way to improve the hard drive mounting would be to replace the trays entirely. There's only a big rectagular hole in the underside to fill and 4 screw holes to mount to so a large aluminium plate could fill the gap and then an all new mounting system for 2 disks built on top of the plate.
The separate trays aren't that useful it has to be said. You've got to have the case on it's side or upside down to get at them so it's not as if you can run the system in normal conditions with only one of them in.
Once the new plate has been built it can be attached at the four screw holes with these screws also be the point where a new set of feet would be attached. The current feet are not good at absorbing vibration, aren't in good positions for stability as they're too far from the corners.
This concept has been done once before:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1032297051
In that mod it was only done so that he could shoe horn more hardware in and it's not going to be very quiet either but a drive mounting structure on top of that would be quite easy.