Zalman Z7 Plus Case Review

The Disk Drive Bays

Zalman Z7 and Z7 Plus come with nine 5 1/4" bays. The top four bays feature screwless installation mechanisms. The removable hard disk drive cage uses five 5 1/4" bays (and can hold up to five 3 1/2"
hard disk drives) and the bottom 5 1/4" bay comes with an adapter for 3 1/2", 2 1/2" and 1.8" devices on it. So in theory you could remove the hard disk drive cage and the adapter and have all nine 5 1/4" bays available, or remove the cage and leave the adapter and have eight 5 1/4" bays available and a space for installing a hard disk drive.

Figure 11: Bays.

Since the hard disk drive cage is removable, you can move it up or down if you’d like to.

The hard disk drive cage can be seen outside the case on Figures 12 and 13. It comes with a 120 mm fan installed on it to cool down the hard drives (glows blue when turned on). It is possible to replace this fan with a 140 mm model if you want to.

The hard drives are installed inside the case using regular screws, however notice how the cage has rubber rings to absorb the vibration produced by the hard disk drives and thus reduce the noise level produced by the computer.

Unfortunately there are some sharp edges on the metal sheets used on the hard disk drive cage and on the 5 1/4" bays, so watch out.

Figure 12: Hard disk drive cage.

Figure 13: Hard disk drive cage.

The adapter that comes installed on the bottom 5 1/4" bay is shown in Figure 14. You can use it to install an external 3 1/2" device such as a floppy disk drive or a memory card reader; a 3 1/2" hard disk drive and a 2 1/2" or 1.8" hard disk drive or SSD.

Figure 14: Adapter.