While the rear of the Samurai is full of sharp edges to be careful of, the rest of the inside is remarkably well-finished. Yes, you'll need to pat attention to what you're doing while installing drives into the bays from the front of the case, but connecting power and data cables should be painless.
Drive installation is truly toolless, unlike some other cases that claim to be but aren't. Simply slide the drive in, line it up with the bezel, slide the retainer forward and push the locking latch down. It looks complicated when written out, but it only takes seconds to do.
Due to the split height of the back panel of the case, the Samurai has a fan box that attaches to the back panel of the case. This fan box isn't toolless, there are two screws that secure it to the back of the case. Also, notice that the top of the fan box comes to just below the little power supply support. Any power supply with a protruding fan or fan grill may have some installation issues. The fan box may also cause some issues with larger heatsinks, so you'll definitely want to plan out which hardware you're going to use in this case in advance!
Front Panel Connectors
As with almost every case made anymore, there are connectors for all sorts of things that are located on the front of the case.
This is the first time I've ever seen a USB connector like this. Not only does it have a single plug for the two front USB ports, it also has the individual wires, just in case your motherboard can't use the plug. I thought that was pretty clever.
The motherboard connectors are pretty standard. One thing I was not pleased to see were the pass-through front audio connectors. I think these are just a terrible idea. Just provide connectors for the motherboard headers and that's it. I don't want to run cables all the way across my motherboard and out the back just to have a front headphone and microphone port available. The power connector is for LEDs located in the power switch. My guess is that these LEDs require more power than the motherboard header can provide.
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