If you choose to install a 120mm intake fan, it will sit behind a thin black metal grill, plastic grill, and in front of another punched metal grill. There isn't a dust filter by any of these grills, and that is perplexing. Dust filters work wonders, particularly when the chassis sits on the floor and every passing dust bunny is like food for the monster. It's surprising that iStar built a case without such and essential feature, the last thing anyone needs is a case fan blowing dust directly onto a full rack of hard drives, and into the case itself.

Accessing the optical drives to drop in a disk usually means cracking open the front bezel door first. The door hides all of the optical drives from view, but if you are constantly opening and closing it, iStar have another clever solution. The bezel door swings open 90 degrees only, then stops. Pushing back on the door will force it to slide back along a set of hidden tracks so that it rests flush against the side of the case. Problem solved! The door is about an inch thick, and when stowed at the side of the case the 5.25" drives are readily accessible.

The flap is designed to fold down when the CDROM ejects a disk. It can also be folded down by hand.

The very top 5.25" drive bay in the Nitro AX is accessible without even opening up the front bezel door. A special spring loaded flap folds down, most likely with the drive tray on a CD ROM opens, so you can insert a disc without cracking open the entire front of the case. We really like the convenience of this slot being integrated into the bezel door - it's a shame more cases don't follow suit.

The face of the iStar Nitro AX case is clean and simple; just a slightly curved brushed aluminum plate with a series of vents. The is intended to hide two CCFL or LED lights behind, with the light bouncing off the convex plastic door frame and through the holes for effect. The aluminum plate extends the full height of the chassis, while the plastic door is just long enough to conceal the five 5.25" drive bays. The front bezel door opens to the left, can be slid back against the side of the chassis so it's out of the way when not needed. There are five 5.25" ODD bays, and two 3.5" FDD bays at your disposal. An intake fan can be placed behind the grill at the bottom of the front bezel, to help cool the rack of hard drives which are directly behind this area.

Note the aluminum extenion which goes all the way to the base when the door is open (at right). There are 5 optical drive bays, and 2 floppy dirve bays. The front panel data ports are all located along the right edge of the case.The front bezel is removable if you need to get at the dust filter in front of the 120mm intake fan. You'll need to remove both side panels to get it off, and be careful as there are a few sharp edges. The Nitro AX is about 18" wide.

A handy set of front pane connectors are located along the left edge of the bezel, on a neat rotating insert. They are accessible with the door open or closed, and the insert can be turned to face the front, or side depending on what you prefer. There is one IEEE 1394a jack, two USB jacks and a pair of microphone input and a headphone jacks. The power and reset buttons are hidden behind the bezel door, just next to the two 3.5" FDD ports, and HDD activity and power LEDs are set off to one side.

The front panel data connectors are set on a tab that can rotate from the side to the front of the case.

Next to all the front panel data ports is a thin black mesh screen where fresh air is drawn into the case. A 120mm fan could be mounted in this space, but as we mentioned there is no dust filter to keep particles out so that may not be a very advisable choice...