Page 3 - Physical Look - Inside
After removing the tempered glass side panel, you can see the internal design of the CMT340. To be consistent with the exterior, the interior of the case is also painted matte black. The paint is sprayed evenly inside the chassis. At bottom of the case, there is a PSU chamber with two SSD trays. You can find the FSP company logo printed on the PSU chamber. The other side of the PSU chamber is actually the side panel. The cool air for the power supply can be blown into the case through the dust filter protected ventilation holes at the bottom of the case directly. If your CMT340 is fully loaded with fans, graphics cards, and long radiators, cool air can be pumped by the fans behind the front panel into the chassis, hit the graphics card, and be expelled out through the top mounted radiator and the exhaust grille at the top panel. If the user only plans to use a small radiator or just a CPU heatsink with the top ventilation grille covered, the hot air can be expelled out through the rear exhaust grille on the back panel. 5.25" drive bays are not present in the CMT340, and this is to reduce airflow obstructions. It will be inconvenient for those people who want to use a CD/DVD drive. The only solution is to buy an external one and connect it by USB, but let us be honest here, it is 2019 already.
As a mid-tower, the CMT340 can support ATX sized motherboards, and of course, smaller boards such as micro ATX and mini ITX. All six motherboard risers are screwed on to the tray already from the factory. Users do not need to apply any other risers according to the size of motherboard that will be used. After bolting the motherboard into position, the heatsink or water cooler block can then be easily installed and removed thanks to the big rectangular opening on the tray. From the above photo, you can see there is a fan from the factory on the CMT340’s rear exhaust opening. If the user wants to use a closed loop water cooler system, it requires an extra step to install the radiator directly onto the chassis, which is to remove the preinstalled RGB fan.
This photo clearly shows the details of the PSU chamber. The PSU is mounted horizontally, therefore the center of gravity of the computer could be low. Power cables can get through the back of the PSU chamber and be rerouted into the motherboard area through the two slots with rubber grommets. In the above picture, you can see the ventilation holes for the PSU at the bottom of the case. The ventilation slots on top of the PSU chamber further enhance the airflow for the power supply. Under the part of PSU chamber that has no ventilation holes, there are two racks for the 2.5" drives. I guess for most people, it is the place to put the SSDs.
5.25" drive bays have been on personal computers since early 1980s. Now it is the time to get rid of them, since we have the internet, and for everything else we do not, there are USB flash drives, which can be used for installing the operating system. As such, the CMT340 has no 5.25" drive bays. I like this design a lot, since it means better airflow and a generally cleaner appearance. From the above photo, it can be seen the place has three RGB fans installed from the factory, which uses proprietary connectors to the RGB controller. The case can fit graphics cards up to 350mm long. For those long and heavy graphics cards, no accessory GPU holder for additional support is available for this case.
Upon removing the right side panel, you will see the other side of the PSU chamber and the motherboard tray. You do not need to worry about the cooling of the power supply, since on the top and bottom sides of the PSU chamber are holes and grilles to guarantee ventilation. Two 3.5" HDD trays are located to the left side of the PSU chamber for easy installing and removing of the hard drives. For the 2.5" drives, you just need to screw it on to the tray and use the clips to attach it to the back of the motherboard tray. Regarding cable management, FSP did a fairly good job here as there are tons of room for cables. Between the motherboard tray and the right side panel, the room for cable routing is about 2cm, which is more than enough even for thick cables. According to the above picture, no Velcro straps are provided for better cable management. By the way, the two openings for cable are not equipped with rubber grommets. Fortunately, all the edges of the cable management openings are pretty smooth. From the above picture, you can also see a small controlling board for the RGB fans, which has proprietary connectors.
Generally speaking, the interior design of the FSP CMT340 is pretty good. All of the components you need for building a computer can be nicely accommodated and kept cool. The paint job quality of the interior is also great. More importantly, you do not to be an expert to route cables to do a good job, since all the major components are located in their conventional places.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. Physical Look - Outside
3. Physical Look - Inside
4. Installation and Conclusion
