We do not see a change in design of the drive bay when comparing with the previous models; the bay was designed to hold on the top layer one optical drive, along with two 3.5’’ drives on the lower layer. If we want to install 2.5’’ drives, we need to buy one or two extra adapters:

On the bottom side of the drive bay we have a plastic clip for cable routing:

Here is how the 4-heatpipe CPU cooling system looks like:

The CPU plate gets fixed to the motherboard via plastic pins, however we would have preferred to see screws instead:

By flipping the assembly on the other side we will be able to see the heatpipe terminations along with the copper plate:

Here is a closer look at the heatsink:

Next, we will take a look a little at the motherboard components; near the VRM heatsink we will be able to see an extra case fan connector along with a single USB 2.0 header:

In the back of the I/O audio ports we will get to see the Audio AUX Input port:

In the vicinity of the Z87 PCH we have an USB 3.0 header which is already populated for serving the frontal ports: