Interior:

Well, I should've left the top on this one. Opening the case brought me back to the early days of crappy cases. This may come as a shock to some of you, but this is the worst case interior I've personally handled in a long time. It's been a long time since a case I reviewed was pissing me off 30seconds outta the box. It's been even longer since one just continued the piss me off the longer I investigated it. Usually there's something along the way that begins to regain my trust in the product and also start making up for it's downfalls.....but not this one. Things just kept looking worse.

For one, this case completely sheds it's external panels with just one thumbscrew. Sounds great right? Wrong. That single thumbscrew is for the TOP PANEL! meaning you have to take off the top panel, then the side panel to get into the case...then you'll also have to take the other side panel off if you want to install or remove virtually anything! Not to mention the top panel, which is smooth as silk has absolutely NOTHING to grab onto once you remove the thumbscrew holding it on....you have to scratch and paw at it till it decides to slide back and allow to you remove it. It took me removing it twice to give the top panel some nice swirl marks in the paint from the palm of my hand pulling back on it. This thing come with carnuba wax?!

I say the "Token" Exhuast fan cuz well, let's face it, it's not there for extraordinary cooling effects. It's pretty darn restricted, not to mention quite weak. ( don't get me going on the front fans just yet!#!@). Why O` Why in this day and age of super hot running, high performance hardware , do companies continue to offer sub-adequate casing and cooling solutions? More on this cases downfalls when he hit the front intakes ( if you can call them that).

Why?Why?Why?

Looks Like A $10 Case Don't It?

Now let's talk about the snap-off IDE brackets/plates, whatever you call them. Should a case that's selling for $90 have breakout IDE plates? I don't think so. My antec doesn't have that. Actually, my Antec doesn't have ANY of the problems of this case . Even as far as snap out IDE plates, these are as cheap as they get. It's pretty bad when you can say that. So far, this case is far from impressing me. It's taunting me to destroy it!

As I stared at the hard drive setup, I couldn't help but notice that the hdd cage appeared to easily remove, but it wasn't budging. After a few minutes, I realized something.....It's held in place by good old fashioned screws. Two of them. And they're buried! One of each side of the case! That means to remove the hdd cage you'll need to strip the case of ALL it's external panels, and to make it worse than that even, it slides out like fingers on a chalkboard. EEEEEEEEEK $@!#!@#!@ DIE!$%#@!$@ To further enhance the pain, the screw on the "other side" is deeper than a south pacific oil rig! You better have a strong magnetic tipped screwdriver handy, or you'll be fishing for a dropped screw. Check this out...

Holy Jumpin Jehovah! Buried!

I Think I Got It , Finally

Very Close To Switches...Too Close!

UGH! Maybe it's just me, but I honestly thought cases that were this un-intelligent were a thing of the past. I mean honestly, you can buy a "cheapy" case from overseas and have less issues, so why pay a good chunk of change to aggravate yourself? I dunno, you decide. I'm just the messenger boy. Remember one thing too, this pain in the a$$ hard drive cage, is a pain in the a$$ with NOTHING in the case, imagine filling it up completely with cables and drives....NO THX! The metal used for the hard drive cage is thin and flexes and bends way too much for my liking, but maybe I'm just overly spoiled with the "built like a tank" Antec 1080AMG ( in the same price range mind you!)..Man I hate when a case urks me to the point of wanting to just close it up and give it to charity.

Well, with the hard drive cage being a complete waste of engineering talent, surely the 5.25" drive bays will be easier, right? Surely they'll have some nice drive rails or snap in mechanism to make up for the hdd cage, right? WRONG!...SO WRONG!#$

$@#!@$!$!@#!

Well, well, well....looky here. The fancy shiny aluminum faceplates are not snap in place, I.E. the Lian Li cases. That apparently would've been far too simple. Instead they are individually held in place by a PAIR of screws. That's right, a screw on each side. That way you get more of a workout by again removing ALL the external panels to properly secure a faceplate. Brilliant! Since there are a total of six 5.25" drive bays, that's a total of 12 screws for nothing more than faceplates. Could it get anymore annoying? Probably, let's continue...