I was searching for a ‘cube’ style mATX case and found this case by Spec Research. It did not have many reviews on Newegg and I couldn’t find any on Google either. Its dimensions were similar to the other cases I was looking at, Silverstone Sugo SG02 and Thermaltake LanBox, so I decided that it wouldn’t hurt to buy the $65 case since it was so cheap. Let me clearly state that I have owned about a dozen cases (half of them were beige) and this is the best case I have ever owned. It is steel and it does have one flaw, but overall this is one kickass case.

The case is almost exactly the same dimensions as my Ultra MicroFly and Aspire/Apevia X-QPack. The front button appears to have an LED behind it, but I don’t know what color it is yet. The pop down drive covers are pretty solid and would blend right in if they didn’t have the little screenprinted labels on them. The front has access to two optical drives, one 3.5” drive, and a little hub with two USB ports and front audio. All pretty standard stuff.

I have owned the original Aspire/Apevia X-QPack, the Antec Aria, and the Ultra MicroFly. This case blows them out of the water because it is designed so well. It accepts a standard size ATX PSU and might accept one of those gargantuan 1000KW extended PSUs if you remove the hard drive cage. It might have some issues with the modular PSUs that have the extremely long modular connectors, but fairly standard modular PSUs shouldn’t have any issues.

The coolest thing about this case that I did not know about is that the top does not come completely off. It resides on a hinge so it carefully tilts off to the side as shown below. The top is locked into place by two plastic “slides” that tighten it down. They are quite sturdy.

Once the top comes off, there is complete unrestricted access to the motherboard tray and components. Once the motherboard is in place there is just under 120mm height clearance for your heatsink which is more than enough for most. The one issue that a lot of you might wonder about is cable routing. Overall there is plenty of room to route your cables to the lower half, but I would suggest sticking with all SATA drives just to make it easier on yourself (my SATA DVD burner was only $35). Also, a modular PSU would make it a little easier as you could disconnect from the top when you wanted to fully open the case up.

For those of you who care about ventilation, this thing rocks the boat for the better there as well (especially for a smaller case). No fans are included, but I think most of us have a pretty decent collection of fans by now. Plus if you don’t have any fans you can tailor the fans to exactly what you want, high CFM for great cooling or low dB for quiet/silent operation. In the top half there is a 60mm right in front of the hard drive cage and an 80mm in the back. For some reason the 80mm has the grill fixed into place with plastic rivets. These can easily be removed. The bottom of the case has a 120mm in the front that blows directly back to the expansion cards. The back has a plastic bracket that holds two 80mm fans even thought the metal vent is really made for 60mm fans. With some decent low decibel fans you could have the wind tunnel in this thing. I was contemplating water cooling for those of us that must overclock. If you are very careful a small water cooling rig could fit in this with the right modding, but the hinged design will give you some more issues over traditional cases. Though I’m sure someone crafty with a dremel could figure something out. Since my video card exhausts heat and the power supply exhausts heat as well, I think I am only going to run an 80mm fan on the top to exhaust any other hot air in the case. I think that should be enough, but since there will be a lack of major airflow I may have to add an active Northbridge cooler to the mobo.

– –

Pros:

• Solid, solid, solid
• Great hinged feature that allows access to tray easily
• Ventilation is superb
• Would make a great gaming or HTPC build.

Cons:

• It is made out of steel (instead of aluminum)
• Cable routing may be tough for newbies
• The one-piece metal cover is a pain to remove and put back on
• The 80mm fan vent in the top has the fan grill held in place with plastic rivets

To comment on this review click here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 at 1:00 am and is filed under Hardware, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.