Installation
Motherboard installation was pretty straightforward in the SPEC-04 Tempered Glass, and getting the board in just the right spot was made that much easier by the pre-installed peg for the center motherboard hole. Simply sliding the board into place and popping the peg through the hole kept us from having to push on the board to get the screws lined up with the remaining holes.
With the board in place, we went ahead with the rest of our peripherals. Our videocard took a bit of work to install,as the vertical cutout at the back of the case was a bit smaller than what we have seen in other cases. We had to flex this portion of the case just a small bit to get the mounting bracket of the videocard through the opening and into place. Our single 2.5″ SSD mounted with ease along the back of the motherboard tray, and routing the cables for the drive was quite easy, thanks to the provided cutouts.
Last up for us was the installation of our power supply, and this was a very smooth process, considering we are using a fully-modular unit. With the PSU mounted to the chassis, we used the provided cutout to hide as much cabling as possible behind the motherboard tray.
We did choose to remove the 3.5″ drive cage, as we were not installing any 3.5″ drives in our build. The removal of the cage was simple; just a few screws. With that out of the way, we had plenty of room for the additional cabling that we were not able to easily run behind the motherboard tray.
When we went to place the tempered glass panel on the left side of the case, we ran into a bit of an issue. Our Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO was just a bit too tall for the quite slim SPEC-04 Tempered Glass. The non-tempered glass SPEC-04 has a cooler height limit of just 150mm, while our Hyper 212 EVO measures in at 159mm. Thankfully we had another option available for cooling our system, but this is definitely something to keep in mind when considering the SPEC-04 Tempered Glass, or any case for that matter.
With a new cooler in place, and cables out of the way, we placed the tempered glass panel back onto the SPEC-04 Tempered Glass, and were quite amazed with how good the build looked. Once powered on, the single 120mm red LED fan up front added a bit of color to the interior, and even made the red plastic trim on the front panel glow. As with any case, but especially tempered glass cases, adding an RGB LED lighting kit, like Corsiar’s own Lighting Node PRO, would look great inside the SPEC-04 Tempered Glass.
