Xigmatek Elysium Super Tower Chassis

You can find the details of the dimensions and features wherever it is sold, and on Xigmatec's website. Let me summarize by saying it is Large. It is one of the few cases that can hold the HPTX size, with 10 slots. Even with a normal “full size” ATX motherboard, the three extra bracket positions are especially handy for the non-card brackets like extra USB ports. I say especially handy because the headers for such are on the very bottom of the motherboard, so the cables are right where they need to be.



The extra space between a (normal sized) motherboard and the drive bay stack is good for keeping cables from forming a bird's nest on top of the board, and makes it much easier to reach the connectors located on the very edge of the board.

The top is perforated and meant to accept 3 140mm fans, and is also drilled for 120mm fans. If you choose carefully, you can fit a 3×140 water cooling radiator up there. If the power supply is in the lower position, you have a vertical 100mm to put stuff at the top of the case and still clear the motherboard area.

Other reviews on the web have pointed out the various features and even some of the goofs. However, nobody seems to have tried putting the casters on. I found that they would not fit properly, as the plastic feet in both front and back are in the way and the casters can't rotate properly. These "feet" are actually more like body extenders or spoilers and really looks better than the box on plain wheels. The instructions don't mention having to remove them, and in order to take them off you have to find the hidden screws under the rubber pads, so I don't think that was the intent.

When I wrote them, they said "sorry" but could not ship corrected hardware. They offered me a free CPU cooler as a consolation prize, but then back pedaled. “Do you need one?” the representative asked.

Later I discovered that the HDD mounting screws did not fit. Their 4-in-3 HDD holders have rubber pads around the mounting points for the drives, to dampen vibration. That means you can't use the normal tiny mounting screws, but need a screw with a large "washer head" and an extra long shank sized for the hole in the grommet, with the threaded part after that. However, the screws they provided were threaded wrong. They fit the mounting holes in the bottom of the drive, not the ones in the sides! They are apparently for the "drawer tray" type with similar grommets (like I have on an Antec case).

I mentioned putting a radiator at the very top of the case. It is an awesome possibility, and I was thrilled to find a case large enough to mount it internally with no modifications! But, the holes were in the wrong place. The mounting pattern for a 140mm fan is standard enough, but what about the spacing between fans? 15mm or 20mm? With mounting fans, you can do what they planned, even if it means shaving a hair of plastic off the fan body. But a radiator has 3 fan-spaced mounting positions that are also fixed relative to one another. I found that the mounting holes on the top of the case were 5mm off. Drilling a hole in the hard steel case is quite difficult, and is the drawback of the well-built steel construction. Making a hole so close to an existing hole is impossible to do cleanly with home hand tools. They should have made these holes as extended slots instead, to accommodate "eased" fan positions that are still touching, or radiators with either 15 or 20mm spacing.

I did mention it is solidly built. As large as it is, it does not have any bracing across the main opening, unlike many other flimsier (yet smaller) aluminum cases. The image that comes to mind is that it is built like a filing cabinet.

There are, however, very tiny straps across the back of the drive bay stack, in three places. Perhaps that is only needed during shipping, because you'll need to remove them to fit anything in those positions. They apparently measured wrong, because they could have fallen between devices, and the positioning error is exactly the same as the gap under the lowest position. So, they measured from the bottom of the case, not the lowest drive position. In my photo, you can see the holes where they were attached.

Another thing they just missed is the USB 3 cables for the front panel. I suppose since motherboards are not providing headers for those, but only putting them on the back panel, they provided a normal USB connector that is meant to thread through the case, out the back, and plug into the back panel. There are lots of pass-through positions for cables and/or hoses. So why not put one at the back of the case, behind the motherboard where they have the cable routing area? You have to rout this cable through the case instead, neglecting the cable routing "basement" they provided as another feature!

The side panels come off, as they do in any tower case. However, they are especially difficult to put on. The little "grabbers" are 3 forks on the top and three on the bottom, and the bottom of the panel does not sit solidly on a "lip" like it does with some other designs. It is easy to drop off and bang the floor. You have to get all the little buttons in the forks at the same time, and then slide half an inch to lock. This means you use your feet on the outer bottom ones, pushing the whole case against the wall since it is on wheels and would move away from you if you press on it; your hands where the outer top buttons are (holding the four corners in is sufficient to make the whole thing flat; the middle ones do take care of themselves after that), and then hope one doesn't pop out when you reach to slide the panel. You need six limbs to do it. This latching mechanism really needs work, especially since other cases have done much better. I found myself needing repeated tries to close it properly; one or another clip would be not engaged after I slid the panel.

I keep running into things that make me think it is a "B−" effort from the engineers, with different people doing different features but not working together, and no final testing of the result.