My mobo is an MSI Big Bang Trinergy, and the psu is a Thermaltake Toughpower, there is way too little room near the SATA ports and it is way too close to the HDD cages; it is a pain to add/remove devices. The PSU is just terrible for cable management but that will go on another review. If e-sata on front was switched with more usb ports I would be happier.
Pros
Cons
Cooling, expansion slots,
So little space on the inside sad, wish hdd cages were rotated to the side, needs more front I/O, looks don't suit me
This case is built like a tank. Seriously, it's heavy, and solid enough it feels like you could take a sledgehammer to it with no effect. I've never had a case with such good airflow. Between the hefty construction, the moderate size (it's not big by atx tower standards) this case hits all the right points. The best part about the great airflow is it comes pretty much silently, and is completely filtered with removable and cleanable (and durable) mesh screens. Case & Mb temps never raise more then 5C over ambient, which is essential in a hot phoenix summer with no AC. Case airflow is so efficient the mesh around the exhaust vents are warmer then the air inside the case. You can't get better airflow then that. There is plenty of room inside the case for tower cpu coolers, the side pannel 120mm fan mount is positioned just right to get both the side of the top gpu cooler and the northbridge/mosfets on the motherboard. the case comes with additional fan mounts to position more fans inside the case to maximize and direct your airflow like you want, a great idea.
If what makes a great case were just case rigidity, build quality, low noise, and awesome airflow this case would be an easy 5 star case. However there are a lot of little issues with this case that are guaranteed to annoy you a little bit. First of all, getting to the front fan mesh screens to clean them requires taking both sides of the case off, undoing 8 thumb screws and removing the 2 hd cages. Its aggravating, annoying, and time consuming. If that doesn't sound annoying you should see what needs to be done to add hard drives to the hard drive cages. very time consuming and annoying. Throw in the iffy cable management, a front panel audio line which is JUST BARELY long enough to reach an audio port on an ATX mb (crossing across the top of the board to get there) and the difficulty involved in cleaning the big fan on top and you have a case which does all the big stuff right (in fact it does all the big stuff better then almost every case out there) while getting most of the mundane stuff a $30 cheap case gets right, wrong. Throw in obvious limits to the length of the gpu you can mount is about 11.5" (less if the power plug is on the back not side of the card) and there are some sacrifices you have to make.
4.5 out of 5 stars, for an air based overclocker there is no better case out there. You can use a 120mm rad on the back exhaust, and with some work a 240mm rad (i got an h100 working in the case) but natively it's not designed for either. If you're going with big air, i can't recommend this case enough. if you're planning on water cooling stay away.
Pros
Cons
Ventilation & Airflow, Quality of construction, Air Filters, Durable, Rigid Frame & Side Pannels
Drive Bays and Front Fan accessibility, Lack of 240mm radiator support, Cable management
Ratings
Overall
4
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