Erad, thx for the info, I knew that but it isn't something that I am in the habit of thinking about. Only recently have I started seeing mention of HDD cooling.
The last time that I actually really had any concerns about HDD temps was back in the mid(?) 1980s. I had a huge (full height, 5 /14"; 300MB) EISA drive (I think that's what its interface was called - post MFM and pre IDE). It was a tempermental bastid. In the winter time, after it had been off overnight, it wouldn't boot the system until the puter had been on for about 20-30min. The best I could ever figure out was that the metal contracted due to the low overnight temps and the heads did not line up properly over the sectors on the platters. After the system "warmed up" for a while it worked fine all day long... until the next morning. This was back in the days when we still had to park the HDD heads.
Chem, other than looks, the cables really aren't an issue. the straight-on 2D pic does not show their z-axis positions well at all. The 4 power cables to the vid cards are stretched high above the mobo and, given their length, there is no possibility of routing them any other way. All of the other cables are on the "floor" of the case (mobo level). I suppose I could have routed the mobo power cable a little better so it is not kinked over (but not touching) the RAM. If there is a cabling issue, it is with the HDD cables. The holes in the HDD bay are a little too small snake the cable thru and there is no back route openings. Thus the HDD cables have to go over the top of the drive bay.
However, you are correct, there is no room to go under the mobo tray. I probably could have routed the cables a little better than I did, if I had been willing to spend more time with it. As I assembled it I did have cable routing in mind tho and attempted to keep them as much out of the way as possible w/o getting obsessive about it - I wanted to get it put together and try it out.
