A decently built, good-looking and quiet case.
Takes a micro-ATX motherboard, a standard ATX power supply, 2 x 3.5" HDD inside, 2 x 5.25" drives and a floppy disc front-mounted. There are four expansion card backplate knock-outs and a pop-out mobo rear ATX connector panel. 12cm blue-lit rear fan.
This isn't the highest quality case you will come across but represents very good value for money. The aluminium structure is a little bit flimsy and the interior has a few sharp edges. However, these minor points are far outweighed by the positives.
The interior is spacious - very spacious. It could have been made quite a bit shorter if the 5.25" drives didn't sit in front of the PSU.
What you get:
1. The case
2. Small cardboard box (inside the case, which means that you have to work out how to open the case without referring to the instructions which are - um, inside the small cardboard box! Hint: pull off the retaining plastic clip at the top rear and slide the top cover backwards). The box contains:
3. A bag of assorted screws, including one with a knurled plastic grip, washers, tiny speaker and a strange bit of adhesive tape.
4. Vestigial instructions comprising six tiny photos and six Chinglish sentences describing how to disassemble the major parts of the structure.
5. A spare expansion card blanking plate. Why?
I used the knurled knob to hold the top panel in place (the knob doubles as one of the PSU screws) to make removing the top cover quick and tool-free. Once the top cover is off, the side panel just lift out.
There are a bunch of wires connected to the inside of the front panel. These are:
1384 (Firewire), 2 x USB, headphone/microphone, reset switch, HDD LED, power LED, power switch, front panel Molex power connector (male and female connectors to allow daisy-chaining) and a temperature sensor. All are well-labelled except for the temperature sensor.
The fan also has a male/female Molex connector, so you will need an adapter (not supplied) if you want to power it from the mobo 4-pin fan connector.
It looks like there is a place for an 8cm fan inside the front panel but I haven't tried fitting one there yet. The internal temperature hovers around 30 degC so it doesn't seem necessary. This is with an AMD Athlon2 250 on an ASRock N68C-S mobo, single HDD, CD/DVD and 2GB RAM.
What you don't get:
1. Any description of which screws and washers go where. Since there are about four types of screw, this needs a bit of guesswork if you are not intimately familiar with building PC cases.
2. Any description of where to put the temperature sensor. I guess the bit of tape is there to attach it to the internal structure.
3. Any cable management, apart from some slots in the internal brackets through which you could pass some wires.
I ended up shoving the temperature sensor between the fins of the CPU heatsink, on the basis that I wanted to know the maximum CPU temp, not just the ambient air temp inside the case. I did try leaving it loose inside the case where it read consistently 2 or 3 degC lower than the CPU.
The case came packed in a plastic bag, polystyrene spacers and sturdy cardboard box with carrying handle - excellent protection.
Pros: Lightweight aluminium and plastic construction with a shiny black finish and silver front panel bezel. Funky see-though panels on both sides and the top. Very quiet, blue-LED 12cm fan on the rear, Temperature readout on the front. Easy-to-remove top and side panels without needing tools. HDD and mobo trays unscrew and slide out to make mounting these components away from the case much easier. Flip-up carrying handle on the front of the case.
Cons: nothing worth seriously complaining about, just niggles such as: poor instructions, it's not a "Cube" - it's longer than I thought (39cm long, 29cm wide and 24cm high). The fan doesn't shift a lot of air, just a gentle waft but since the temperature doesn't go above 33degC, I think this is OK- it certainly keeps the fan nice and quiet.
Overall: Very happy with it and glad I didn't go for a boring mini-tower format. I love watching the fans spinning away through the clear side panels!