Our intrepid case reviewers survey the
newest enclosures to see which are worthy of holding your precious components
It's been more than a year since our last
big case roundup. In that time, case manufacturers haven’t been idle. The USB
3.0 spec finally got an internal header, new competitors joined the mid-tower
market, and the price of a great case has steadily decreased. We gathered seven
of the newest and most exciting mid-tower cases, all priced between $100 and
$160, and put our two most seasoned case reviewers to the task of separating
the run-of-the-mill from the cream-of-the-crop. We'll leave no stone unturned and
no metaphor unmangled. Yes, we’re on the case.
Antec Eleven Hundred – goes far, but not all the way
Antec
Eleven Hundred
In a weird twist, Antec has delivered a
case that's both full on features and lacking in some of the company's staple
design elements. Take, for example, the case's built-in fan controller – or
lack thereof. We’re used to being able to flick switches to independently control
all of the fans within an Antec chassis, but after connecting a Molex to the
provided circuit board in the Eleven Hundred – annoyance number one – we were
displeased to find that the switch only turns the top 20cm fan’s blue LED on
and off. You can’t physically adjust the speed of that or the case’s rear 12cm
fan.
Antec’s big on allowances: You could stick
up to seven additional 12cm fans in the system (including two uglier mounts on
the case’s side panel), in addition to six hard drives (using rails), two
2.5-inch SSDs, and three 5.25-inch devices. There’s ample space for stuffing an
XL-ATX, microATX, Mini-ITX, or standard ATX motherboard into the chassis, and
we especially love all the cable-management tricks that Antec builds into the
chassis: four rubber-rimmed holes for cable management (or water-cooling
tubes), a huge hole in the motherboard tray for easier installation of
aftermarket CPU coolers, and a big inch-wide space between the tray and the
case’s side panel for more cable management.
We love how the case’s front panel pops off
without a sea of wires dangling behind it, like those for the case’s two USB
2.0 ports and two USB 3.0 ports (real headers, not pass-through). All in all,
installing a system into the Eleven Hundred is a breeze, although folks with
bulkier water-cooling setups might want to steer clear. This case offers
plenty of potential; not perfection, but not a headache, either.
Silverstone Temjin Tj04-E – Keep it simple, stupid
Silverstone’s Tj04-E is a modern take on a
classic ATX mid-tower. It doesn’t even have a weird motherboard orientation.
That's not to say it's boring.
The TJ04-E is a steel case, matte black
inside and out. Its brushed-aluminum front panel has beveled edges and contains
four 5.25-inch drive bays. The case ships with three 12cm fans: an intake fan
in the right panel, as well as top and rear exhaust fans, with room for an
additional fan on top, on the side, and at the case's bottom. The TJ04-E has
lots of drive room. One small cage holds six 2.5-inch drives, a pull-out cage
holds eight 3.5-inchers, and the area below can hold either a 2.5- or 3.5-inch
drive. To help with cable management, Silverstone included two of its
four-in-one SATA power cable extenders.
Silverstone
Temjin Tj04-E
The drives screw directly into the bays
(upside down!), and the case ships with two heatsinks that attach directly to
the sides of the drives to keep them cool. The SSD cage can also mount directly
into the HDD cage – necessary if you have a long PSU.
The motherboard tray supports ATX, microATX,
and Mini-ITX boards, and the tray has nine cable-routing cutouts and one large
CPU backplane cutout. There's plenty of room behind the tray for cable routing,
and there's even a compartment behind the PSU to hide extra PSU cables.
The build quality is solid, but the side
panels pop off easily as soon as the thumbscrews are removed. The only
front-panel connectors are two USB 3.0s (with internal header) and HD Audio,
and the cables for both are quite long. At $160 for the version with the side
window, it ain’t cheap, but if you want refined good looks, great cable
management, and a minimalist, classy aesthetic, the TJ04-E is for you.
