MSI Stealth Chassis Reviewed: Mixed Experiences

The chassis also boasts tool-less installation for both 3.5” and 5.25” drives. The 3.5” hard drive installations were easy, straightforward, and effective, making for one of the primary positive features on the chassis. Pull on the tabs, pull out the tray, open the tray, pop in a hard drive, close it, and slide it back in. However, the 5.25” drive installation was a pain that is glossed over in the manual. Installation of the 5.25” drive requires the user to remove the front panel in order to pull out the bay cover. This is complicated by the fact that the front panel has wires that run into the chassis and attach to the motherboard, meaning it is far from convenient to completely pull off the front panel. We installed our CD/DVD drive by pulling it out far enough to hold it out of the way while we removed the bay cover and pushed in the CD/DVD drive. The chassis was also built to a very tight specification (or slightly out of spec depending on how you see it) and the CD/DVD drive barely fit, requiring a lot of coaxing and jiggling to get it to fit into the bay. Thankfully, the tool-less retention system worked well and without issue.





The specifications of our build are as follows:

Processor: Intel Core i5 3450 3.1GHz
Motherboard: Gigabyte Intel H77 GA-H77M-D3H Micro-ATX
Graphics: Radeon HD 5570
RAM: Patriot Viper Xtreme Series, Division 2 Edition 4GB (2 x 2GB) 1600 MHz
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda Green 1.5TB 5900RPM SATA 6.0 Gb/s
Power Supply: Cooler Master eXtreme Power Plus 500W (RS500-PCARD3-US)
CD/DVD Drive: Sony AD-7280S-0B 24x
Chassis: MSI Stealth IN-602

The power supply and motherboard were very easy to install, as is the case on most chassis, it just required the power supply to be screwed in, and the motherboard to be placed on the standoffs and screwed in. The cable management options were okay, although not exceptional. It would have been nice to have a few more routing options, as some openings were just barely big enough for certain connectors. However, it was only after fully installing the components that our biggest issue occurred...