Product Showcase - Exterior

See that latch located at the top that really looks like the old Ceylon eye from the original Battlestar Galactica series ? Well it is an  X-Dock.

And then you ask, what is an  X-Dock  ? Well, that actually is a  hot-swappable driver bay for 2.5" storage devices. So you can insert an SSD here on the fly. It is a bit of an unusual feature .. but truth be told, I like it very much. Then again we swap out SSDs for testing like the cookie monster eats cookies -- Yam-yam-yam.

The front of the Stryker is defined by a nine fold of mesh drive bay covers. The covers are easily removed by simply pressing the tabs on each side towards one another. They are all backed by a dust filter to help keep out unwanted dirt, muck, sewage ;).

So below the X dock we the see nine 5.25" drive bays, the lower segment houses the HDDs by the way so you can insert three optical drives. You can house eight 3.5 storage devices (converted from 5.25 bay by two 4-in 3 HDD modules) or if you like to, thirteen 2.5 storage units (converted from 5.25 bay by two 4-in 3 HDD modules).

One of the bigger features of the Stryker is the two completely modular hard drive cages that can hold a total of four drives each. By default the cages are installed facing vertical to the front of the case and can be removed by just undoing thumb screws. Cooler Master advertises that this spot (behind the bezel) can house a radiator that is up to 482mm in length. The downside there though is that you need to remove the drive cages behind it.