The case interior
While the interior of the R-2 is quite roomy for the motherboard and the expansion cards, the drive cage which is also placed perpendicularly can only hold two 3.5” drives and there are no intake fans at the front of the case. The single optical drive which can be installed pretty much takes all of the front panel space when placed perpendicularly. Therefore, the 3.5” drives cannot receive any active cooling, although the side panel and front panel of the case are perforated and there should be a small amount of airflow created by the exhaust fans. There is a single 80mm fan pre-installed at the rear of the case and there is a slot for another 80mm optional fan above it.
The front panel of the R-2 can simply come off by pulling it. The installation of the optical drive is not difficult and all common optical drives should fit as the eject button mechanism is adjustable to match any unit. However, you should be careful to purchase a new optical disk drive which is not overly long, as long optical drives (such as older Plextor and NEC drives) leave no room for the cables and are impossible to install. A SATA interface optical drive is highly recommended!
The GMC R-2 Toast can fit even a high end full ATX system inside it. The motherboard fits easily and there is plenty of room for large expansion cards and even power supply units. The major limitation of the R-2 are the 3.5” and 5.25” device slots, which you only get to install two hidden 3.5” devices and a single 5.25” optical drive. While a powerful system can fit inside the R-2 Toast, there is little room for cable management left. That is not a major problem and a few cable ties can work wonders, but a modular power supply unit would also help a lot.
