CoolIT Boreas MTEC Chassis Review

Interior Impressions Cont.

On the positive side, the hard drive bays are nicely laid out and extremely easy to use. To remove one of the two bays, one has to removed both side panels, then unscrew the mounting screw (which is captured screw and thus can’t easily be lost) and slide the cage forward and then up. Installation of a hard drive is once again a retro affair in which you slide a hard drive into one of the three locations and then screw it in. This does make for a very secure mounting setup but if your hard drive is a loud / high vibration model (like a Raptor) it will turn this cage in an oversized tuning fork. Of course, the fan on the front of the cage actually helps here as its making its own vibrations and they actually cancel each other out very nicely.


When it comes to a chassis, everything else is minor since it is the motherboard area which will make or break a good case. In this instance the motherboard area is a mixed bag of excellent execution and god awful mistakes.

Lets start with the bad. If there is one thing system builders have come to expect it is a well laid out and marked motherboard tray. It doesn’t matter if it is stamped into the metal or silk screened on but a good hole layout with easy to read instructions has become the de-facto standard and yet Silverstone has overlooked it. This motherboard tray can handle just about everything from extended ATX to mATX and anything in between so there is a whole bunch of standoff holes in the metal and yet nary a one is marked! This isn’t a big deal and if this was a $50 product it could easily be forgiven but in this case it can't. This is a custom rig and yet CoolIT has stumbled over the smallest and minor of things. If CoolIT is going to put their name on a case they had better be ready and willing to fix any minor annoyances like this before it leaves the shop.


One of the great things about the TJ07 is that the motherboard tray is removable and yet is securely held in place with numerous thumb screws. This makes for a very easy and user-friendly setup. With some removable motherboard trays the tray to chassis lockup is rather sloppy and the tray can actually vibrate in day to day operations. Not with this one though.

The motherboard tray itself slides in and out of the chassis via two nicely formed metal rails. The only down side to this setup is that metal is grinding against metal. This is another area CoolIT could have stepped up and customized the TJ07 with small low friction tape or even low friction plastic inserts to make this more smoother. This is nit-picking but it still is something we would have like to have seen on our $800 device.

Taken as a whole this really is a great case, just one that has a few nits which need to be picked. Nits or no, this still is a great chassis and was a very good choice for CoolIT to have made. Are there better cases which could have done just as good a job? Maybe one or two, but either way this case in its current configuration definitely goes a long way towards justifying the Boreas MTEC Chassis' price tag.