Employing a similar layout as the Storm Enforcer, Fractal Design’s Arc Midi gives us two more hard drive bays, two fewer 5.25” drive bays, grommets on cable pass-through holes, slightly greater card length, and a flatter top panel for reduced peak height.

Removing the center drive cage extends maximum card length from 11.7” to 17.8”, but only in slots one through three. Since most motherboards place the graphics card in slot two, the extra space is usually useful for one dual-slot card.

The Arc Midi’s 5.25”-to-3.5” external drive adapter is factory-installed in the lower external bay, but its face plate is packaged separately. You'll also find a three-fan controller with adapter cable, two reusable cable ties, and a bag of screws and standoffs in the installation kit.

The Arc Midi’s cable kit is cluttered up a little by the presence of both HD Audio and AC'97 front-panel connectors. The latter has been out of use for several years.

While 3.5” drives use grommets to dampen vibration, 2.5” drives screw directly to the Arc Midi’s hard drive trays, since SSDs don’t vibrate.

Our slightly-oversized ATX motherboard covers the Arc Midi’s cable holes about half-way, forcing us to maneuver large cables around the front edge of the motherboard tray. A hole above the motherboard makes room for our ATX12V lead.

With no windows or lighted fans, the Arc Midi looks more like a workstation than most of its competitors. A side-panel fan mount is the only visual cue to its gaming intent. But then again, some folks like their gaming boxes looking clean.
- Do Cases With More Features Offer More Value?
- Building With The Antec Eleven Hundred
- Building With The Cooler Master Storm Enforcer
- Building With The Fractal Design Arc Midi
- Building With The Raidmax Agusta
- Building With The SilverStone Kublai KL04
- Test Setup And Benchmarks
- Temperature, Noise, And Acoustic Efficiency
- One Value-Oriented Chassis Satisfies Most Buyers
Antec, I think, has fallen behind in case design as of late. While the Eleven Hundred is much better than the aging 900/300 design, it still has some small points of meh such as only one 2.5" drive bay when there are other cases close to the price (not current price but original price) trat support 2.5" in every drive bay.
Also the design is a bit meh. Though I have fallen in love with the Corsair 500R so its a bit hard to make me think of another case. And the CM Storm Enforcer is ok. Had one in the shop the other day. Nothing amazing honestly but its not overly bad.
BTW, you should at least read the ENTIRE conclusion before calling an article a fluff piece. Thanks!
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
As long as the case functions and has what you need -- it's all what YOU like and flips that switch.
Yeah but that's when people choose crap or junk brands like Raidmax, Xion, Ultra and Apevia - those have serious flaws and horrible build quality, I really try to persuade people not to buy those under any circumstances. The computers I work with on a daily basis all use these cases and they suck - I moved a computer built around an Apevia case from one desk to another and the door fell off in the process! There's a lot of crap brands out there and that's why sites like this exist - to help people sort the good hardware from the junk. You don't want to get a case that's poorly made for your new quality components.
The things I never recommend on builds are monitor, keyboard and mouse - I don't like spending hundreds on these things and I don't cut corners to get say a $140 keyboard, that's not what I want people to concentrate on their builds.
Of course, like everyone else, I think my case (Antec P280) is the best and should be the recommended buy. It is $30 more than the Eleven Hundred, but only $10 more than the Raidmax.
I used the CM Storm Enforcer for a friends build and it's quite a good case, thanks to it's price in a 99%, lol.
It's not bad looking and very quiet. Fit's the 7970 perfectly and it's build quality is quite good.
Cheers!