The Soprano's drive bays are very accessible and plentiful. Your hard drives will be kept cool by the 120mm intake fan and if you need more bays that this case offers, you have no business buying a midtower case. The drives can be added and removed toollessly with the help of a number of plastic drive rails.

Here is the included drive rails and the mounting hardware. The rails are pretty strange looking, it looks like they were designed by the Joker, but they work well and really cut down on installation time. The hardware which comes with the Soprano is not toolless and will require a screwdriver to install your motherboard. This is a real downer because it is really easy to have a toolless installation- Thermaltake has done it before with cases that are not much more expensive than this one. The main differences would be toolless motherboard standoffs, fans, right side panel, and possibly the PSU, though this is a bit of a gray area.

Installation

Setup:
Asus P4P800 SE, Intel 2.8C, stock CPU cooler, Antec Phantom 350W PSU, PowerColor 9250, 2x512 Mushkin PC3700

Our installation was a breeze, even if we did need a screwdriver. The whole build took about twenty minutes and we encountered no major problems. The PSU and motherboard went right in place and the drive rails worked rather well. The purple and green rails were not very intuitive but once we figured them out the installation flew by. A high point of the build was the expansion slot installation. The green clips open and snapped shut with an authoritative "click". At first they was some hesitation because you have to push pretty hard but once you have done it once you get the feel for it.

Once the case was running it was a nice change of pace considering how Thermaltake's cases have been loud, too bright, usually feature too many fans. The Soprano was very quiet, especially once I decided my system did not need to be running the side window fan. I was quite happy that Thermaltake opted not to add any extra lighting or strange patterns on the case. The case was designed to be understated and classy without sacrificing performance, it does this pretty nicely.