The overall score is made up of the following rating criteria:
- Construction of case, exterior, side panels and front door
- Edges and corners, risk of injury when opening the case and installing hardware
- Installation of the motherboard, expansion cards and various power supplies
- Wiring for front ports, drives, motherboards
- Expandability and installation of hard drives and 5.25" drives and fan-speed controller
Our Testing Hardware
To make our scores as realistic as possible, we installed various hardware components in each midi tower. The foundation for the PC was an IC7-MAX3 motherboard from Abit. We then mounted an AGP graphics board from MSI and - case permitting - a 4-channel controller from Advansys. While it isn't the most bleeding-edge board, we were more interested in trying to install a PCI long card. The hard drives were chosen from a number of 40 GB models from various manufacturers. Our 5.25" drive was a 16x DVD drive from MSI. We used an ultra-short Superflower Fan Master for our fan-speed controller because we knew that it couldn't be installed on every midi case.

IC7MAX3 from Abit is the foundation for the PC.

Not exactly MSI's flagship model anymore: we were more interested in installing the AGP card.

The 4-channel controller was developed in the 90s as a PCI long card.

We wanted to mount four hard drives in every case.

The Superflower fan-speed controller showed whether the cases could accommodate short 5.25" devices.

The new Targan PSU TG380-U01 has a rat's nest of long cabling.
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The Levicom PSU is ½" deeper, and a good example of oversized power supplies for our midi tower round-up.

The new golden Enermax power supply uses a short 40 cm cable that is also very rigid.
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Summary
- Cucumber Salad Or Band-Aid?
- Ouch! The Pain Of Razor-Sharp Edges
- The Cases: Up Close And Personal
- Simple Motherboard Installation
- Hard-Drive Trays
- Fresh Air With 120 mm Fans
- Rails For 5.25" Drives
- Perfect Construction
- Casetek C1020: Enter The Dragon
- Easy Installation Of Motherboards, Graphic Boards And Hard Drives
- The Hazards Of Installing 5.25" Drives
- Pros
- Chieftec BX-01: Plenty Of Room For Hard Drives
- A Glimpse Inside The Case
- 90-Degree Carriage Rotation Simplifies Hard-Drive Installation
- Safe Installation Of 5.25" Drives
- Pros
- Coolermaster Wavemaster: All Metal With Sharp Edges
- Coolermaster Wavemaster, Continued
- Installing The Motherboard Outside
- Hard Drives Screwed Directly On The Case
- Pros
- Inter-Tech Sportcar Design: Typical Engine Sound With 6 Fans
- Roomy Interior
- Up To 11 Drives Fit In The Case
- Razor-Sharp Edges And Corners
- Pros
- InWin IW-J568G: With Fan Speed Controller And Card Reader
- Motherboard Installation A Hassle
- Old-Fashioned Card Holders
- Waste Of Space
- Pros
- Lian Li PC-V1000: Innovative Interior
- Ingenious Innards
- The PSU Down Under
- Room Enough For Six Hard Drives
- Screws Into Threads Not Into The Case
- Front Bevel Included
- Gotcha: Two Minor Weaknesses
- Pros
- NZXT Guardian: Zylon From Battlestar Galactica
- No Sharp Edges Inside
- Complicated Rail System For Drives
- No Dust Filters Inside The Case
- Revoltec Midi Tower: Chieftec With A New Design
- Traditional Hardware Installation
- Rails For 5.25" Drives
- Special Carriages For Hard Drives
- Pros
- Silverstone Temjin SST-TJ02: Struggle With Drive Rails
- Rails Secure Drives Firmly
- Pros
- Silverstone Temjin SST-TJ03S: Pricy XXL Format
- Spacious Interior
- Screws And Expansion Cards
- Complicated Front-Port Cabling
- Superflower X-Mask SF-462: Spider Design
- Roomy Interior For Many Hard Drives
- Card Installation With Brute Force
- Are These Designers Crazy?
- Thermaltake XaserV V5000A: Full Metal Jacket
- Problems With Graphics-Card Installation
- Pros
- Yeong Yang YY-5603: No Major Flaws
- Tidy Accessories
- Anti-Vibration Rails For Drives
- Break-Away Face Plates
- Jet-Computer Last Samurai: Shades Of Darth Vader
- Testing Procedure
- Ratings
- Features Chart
- Features, Continued
- Features, Continued
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0 Hidedovah-chan , June 24, 2014 8:55 AMafter over 10 years this is the first comment on this article