Mounting the motherboard and power supply are easy enough, although a tight fit – the Adamas is supposedly the same size as the Lexa, but there isn’t nearly as much room to maneuver in the Adamas. When it comes to drive installation, there are two major issues that can come into play, depending on your hardware:

1. The optical drive hideaway, while a cool feature that gives the front of the case a nice consistent look, isn’t compatible with your standard optical drive unless you can remove the drive’s front panel; I had to remove the panel on the case to get my CD-RW to fit. Also, for some odd reason, the case only includes one of these hideaways, even though the case has four 5.25” bays.
   
   
2. I have two optical drives (a TDK CD-RW and a Philips DVD-ROM), so even if the hideaway fitted properly, I was still going to spoil the look of the case by putting in two optical drives. However, I quickly found myself forced to put the drives in a certain order, because the TDK drive wouldn’t fit in the top bay. Then, when installing my hard drive (a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10), I ran into another problem: the drive cage would not fit the drive. I did another installation with an older IBM Deskstar drive and had no problems, but clearly this case isn’t for everyone.

Operation

Operation for the Adamas is very straight forward and trouble-free – like the Zero and the Lexa, the Adamas sports a number of surprisingly quiet case fans that should keep the case relatively heat-free. The simple form of the case means that it will fit easily in the limited space offered in those computer desk “CPU” slots, while the convenient placement of the buttons, lights and the cool hideaway front panel connectors make for easy access to all of the case controls you’d need on a day-to-day basis. In essence, the ease of operation balances the problems with the installation, so if you’re only doing one installation with this case (and your hardware fits), the Adamas might be suitable for you.