Installation went smoothly and there weren't any hangups. The motherboard tray has plenty of holes to fit different board types and is labeled as to which holes are needed. The hard drive rails snap in easily and hold them very firmly in place. Ditto for the optical and floppy drive latches, although there is some confusion as to which set of holes should be used. I ended up leaving the drives loose in the bays until I reinstalled the front panel so I could better judge the depth they would need mounted at. This is especially important for the optical drive as the stealth cover must allow the button press to transfer to the front of the drive inside.



The plain beige drive looks much better hidden behind the stealth cover and has no problem opening or closing. The fold-down flap has the proper tension to not impede the tray sliding open but still able to return to fully closed when the tray slides back into the drive. It's too bad that NZXT didn't opt to include a stealth floppy cover or matching gloss black plate with cutout opening; you'll definitely want a black drive to mount here. Lots of people don't even bother with floppy drives anymore but I still find them invaluable.



The blue LED side fan adds a nice splash of color to the Alpha as do the matching front panel lights. The light along the right side has a molex connection and plugs into the power supply. The one on the left that was loose is the power LED that plugs into the motherboard, unfortunately I didn't figure out that I had it backwards until after I took all the pictures. The light from the lone LED does travel along the acrylic trim, lending a subtle blue glow to the front panel. It would be nice to see what it looked like with both lights functioning.

Let's wrap up this review with some final thoughts just ahead.