This case is attractive, well built, and fits perfectly with any solid home AV system. It doesn't look out of place at all. The front face is metal and looks beautiful. The inside of the case has a good layout and will accept your standard ATX power supply. I recommend you get one with a 120mm side cooling fan. The case makes allowances for power supplies that are deep and may bump into the left side 120 mm case fan. There are secondary screw holes in the fan grill to accommodate a smaller 90/80 mm fan in its place to give your power supply more room. Fans that come with the case are arranged to blow air into the case. All case fans have air filters on them, on the exhaust side of the fan. If you arrange it to suck air out of the case, you'll get dust coming in from the unfiltered venting grids. There is no fan controller. Use what you have on your motherboard, use the stock speed, or get a separate controller. The DVD/BD drive sits right above the CPU and RAM. This means your cpu cooler can't be more than 2 1/2 inches high ( 70 mm according to docs). For reference: I have a AMD Athlon X2 64 with the stock cooler, and it has about 1/2 inch between it and the bottom of the drive bay. Be sure to secure your DVD/BD drive with four screws or the drive bay may vibrate annoyingly. All HD mounts have rubber grommets with appropriate screws. The case comes with a collection of MB stand offs and the grommet mounting screws for your HD (they are about 1 cm long with a smooth section near the screw head). The power light and hard drive activity light is combined into one indicator next to the reset button in the front. This means the two lights blend together. As a result you don't get annoyingly conspicuous flashing during operation, but you can see the light brighten when the drive is running. It's nice. The cable management is good too. There is space in front of the power supply to hold any left over power cables. The case has loops in the metal to thread through cable ties, included, to help keep your innards nice and neat. Overall, very well thought out. I had no trouble putting everything where it needs to go, but there are two things you must pay very careful attention to: the DVD/BD driver door configuration and front face plate.
Your DVD/BD drive can't have a face plate that stretches from the left edge to the right edge. The front panel of this case is designed for the more popular configuration where the edges of the tray are about 1 cm from left edge and right edge and about 1/2 inch tall. This means most drives will work. Putting on the face plate is tricky. It attaches with double sided sticky foam tape. The tape is about 1 thick, and, man, it is sticky. So you may only have one go at this. You must make sure you give the faceplate enough room on all sides so it slides in and out of the recess without banging into the sides. The way that worked for me was:
* put my BD drive in the bay
* secure the screws loosely
* slip business cards at the bottom and sides (pieces of card)
* do a dry run and put plate in *without* the tape
* align the front of the plate so it's pushed in a little from the front of the case
* screw down the drive, because screwing it down lowers the drive a bit
* put the tape on the faceplate
* pop the faceplate into the front onto the face of the drive tray
* Remove the business cards
* admire your work
Things to pay attention to:
* Make sure the tape is no longer than the front of your drive tray.
* When you screw down the drive, it will actually change the vertical position of the drive tray. So be sure to screw it down before attaching the face plate.
* Do not have any tough jewelry on like tungsten or stainless rings. It will scratch the front of the case if you're not careful.
* The kit comes with little rubber stick on feet. You may need these to lift the height of your power supply so that it lines up with the screw holes on the back. You get four of them. I ended up using them.
The instruction manual is pretty good, but a bit ambiguous in places. Regardless, be sure to read it before you start. It's a quick read, maybe 5 minutes max.
Happy Building!
Compare with similar items
This Item  Silverstone Front Panel and SECC Body Micro ATX HTPC Computer Case GD04B (Black) |  |  |  |  |  | |
| Price | Currently unavailable. | $149.99 | $153.39 | $199.99 | $182.08 | $129.42 |
| Delivery | — | Get it as soon as Monday, May 6 | Get it as soon as Monday, May 6 | Get it as soon as Monday, May 6 | Get it as soon as Monday, May 6 | Get it as soon as Monday, May 6 |
| Customer Ratings | ||||||
| Sold By | — | Amazon.com | Amazon.com | Amazon.com | Amazon.com | Amazon.com |
| case type | — | tower | mid tower | — | tower | slim desktop |
| motherboard form factor | Micro ATX | Micro ATX | Micro ATX | Extended ATX | ATX | ATX |
| material | Aluminum | Aluminum | Aluminum, Alloy Steel | Aluminum | Aluminum | Alloy Steel, Plastic |
| cooling method | Air | Air | Air | Air | Air | Air |
| number of usb ports | 2 | 2 | — | 1 | — | 2 |
| fan count | 3 | 3 | 1 | — | 4 | 2 |
| hard disk form factor | 2.5 inches | 2.5 inches | 2.5 inches, 3.5 inches | 3.5 inches | 3.5 inches | 2.5 inches |
| USB 2.0 ports | 2 | 2 | — | — | — | 0 |
| weight | — | 5.5 kilograms | 15 pounds | — | — | 19 pounds |
