Installation:

Once the hard drive assemble was finally outta the way, I noticed the two puny 60mm intake fans in the lower front. Are they serious? Honestly? They taut this case as silent, they failed to mention "that's because the fans are useless!" I powered up these puny fans and I honestly couldn't tell they were on till i stuck my finger in one. They blow absolutely no air. To add to that, you get 2 messy 4-pin pass-thru molexs to deal with, like these fans need that. I bet they'd run forever on a watch battery. They can't draw any kind of power, they barely work at all. Let's not forget the hard drive cage will shriek it's way into the position right in front of these fans, and be careful not to slice your fan connections, or tear off your power button wiring when arranging the hard drive cage. ugh.

Finally, something non-negative about the case. The motherboard went in without issue. The supplied motherboard stand-offs screwed securely into place and held the board without movement. The rear motherboard ports fit fine with the bracket, however, even the bracket was pretty flimsy on the rear of the chassis. ( where you'd plug in your mouse, etc ) It doesn't really dampen the useability of the case, but it does show yet another cost cutting feature on the already cheesed down chassis.

The wiring for the front power button and leds was extremely long. It was long enough to connect to the rear of the psu! Why it was so long can only make me specualate they use the same wiring harness for small and large cases, again to save money. If you're power switch connections are on the bottom left of your motherboard, like most are, then you'll have a nice plate of spaghetti with the leftover wiring.

My Metallic Silver Drives Look Sexy

Upper 5.25" Space OK

Lower 5.25" Space Snug.

After the motherboard, I installed a Pioneer Slot DVD and a Plextor Burner. Both drives custom painted in silver metallic. The drives, or course, looked exceptionally well with the silver aluminum front of the case. However, it would look just as nice in any silver aluminum case, so that doesn't make this special. You can see the clearance in having drives both upper and lower from inside the chassis. Upper is ok, Lower is a bit snug...especially considering the IDE cables that would be sticking outta any drives there. However if you use the added lower 5.25" drives for baybus` or fan controllers, the added drive space could be handy, but that would be the exceptional few I'm guessing. I think the case could stand to be another inch or two deeper ( front to rear) to make things a bit more roomy.

before I begin to wrap up this review ( or sadistic torture ritual ), i'd like to direct your focus back to the front aluminum door and chassis fascia. One thing I couldn't help noticing ( while the door was violently flailing open and shut on it's own) was the weight of the door. It was beefy to say the least. What made this more intriguing was the fact that the rest of the case felt like a dimestore donation. How could this be? Would a company actually do this to itself? I had to tear apart the entire aluminum front to see what lies beneath. The results are quite odd to say the least, considering the subject...

Over 3 Lbs Of Aluminum!

Solid Aluminum, Quite Heavy

As I mentioned earlier, there was eight Allen wrench head screws to remove in order to get to what you see above. Yes, Allen wrench screws. The two "flanges" you see above are the top lip and bottom lip of the front assembly. They're constructed of solid aluminum and are quite heavy. Overbuilt? For this case, absolutely! With the high quality front aluminum fascia/door strapped to the salvation army chassis, it's quite the oddball of cases.

I was so curious as to how much aluminum was bolted to the front of this rig, I had to weight it. Adding up the weight of just the aluminum you see pictured above was 3lbs, 10.8oz. of solid aluminum! I think we see what the public is paying for in that $89 now don't we?! I personally feel it's terrible to mislead the buying public like this, but hey, most of the buying public is uninformed and easy to sway. It's the geeks and modders, like myself, that know the real difference between show, go , and quality. Judging this case against the last few cases I've reviewed, this falls flat on it's heavy front door (with it's skinny steel body sticking straight up in the air).

Silver Aluminum Psu Added

Another Angle

I barely added an old iCute 420w psu I had lying around into the case. I say barely because I had to cram it in there scraping and stretching both sides of the weak horizontal supports on each side of the psu. It did finally fit into the area snugly and powered perfectly. Powering up the system was uneventful. Not a creature was stirring, nor was the airflow in the case. If you buy this case and Don't plan on modding it for cooling, you had better buy some big 4 fan psu or something to make up for the lackluster case cooling. (or as least attempt to make up for some of it)

I'm guessing I'm not the only modder out there that can't take his eyes off that fan grill stamped area.....right? Yea, thought so. Me too. Hand Me My Dremel!#@! .......No wait, this case isn't worth wasting a cutting disc on.