Inside – HDD system
The Triton 180's removable cradle holds up to three 3.5in hard disk drives. These are secured in place using the included drive rails - one on each side of a drive. The cradle, though, is a bit of an awkward customer.
We realised this when we decided to remove the cradle to make as much room as possible available when building the system into the case. Fact is, the cradle doesn't have to be removed but that's how we like to do things - just to make life easy. So we set about removing it...
Two small screws secure the cradle to the motherboard area. Having removed those, we expected the cradle just to slide out. But, after a bit of pulling and swearing, we started to think that the cradle must have been riveted in place somewhere out of sight.
To check, we put the case on its side, only to discover, happily, not rivets but two fixing screws. Undoing these screws allowed the cradle to slide out cleanly.
Okay, not everyone wants or needs a removable drive cradle but our view is that it's very welcome - making the build itself easier and also allowing the drives to be installed more conveniently while the cradle is on the workbench.
And, of course, given that there are so many free front-facing drive bays, a removable cradle has one additional benefit - taking it out completely creates space for installing a water-cooling pump!
So, thanks Gigabyte for giving the user choice and not riveting the cradle permanently in place.