Raidmax turns the layout of traditional full-towers upside-down in its Agusta, its modernized motherboard-on-top design putting drive cages at the bottom. Like most cases with a power supply below the motherboard, the Agusta has a hole at the top of the motherboard tray that looks like it'd be suitable for an ATX12V lead.

You might also expect a 23.8” case with a top panel over 2” thick to support liquid cooling, but the Agusta’s design doesn’t make that possible. There’s barely enough room in the top panel to hold its two stock fans, and those can only be installed and removed after first pulling out the motherboard.

Our Agusta sample arrived without a manual, but the rest of its installation kit includes three cable holders, several fiber washers, several cable ties, and mounting screws. Standoffs were factory-installed on the motherboard tray, with one missing.

Raidmax ditches the outdated AC'97 audio connector in favor of cleaner HDA-only wiring. A flat ribbon holds power, reset, and activity leads to further clean-up the cable cluster.

The Agusta’s drive trays place 3.5” drive mounting holes on the side and 2.5” holes on the bottom. Five-and-a-quarter-inch bays above those use quarter-turn release latches.

We stated that a hole at the top of the Agusta’s motherboard tray appears to support ATX12V leads, but that hole gets covered up by any motherboard. Raidmax can’t fix this without a complete redesign, since there’s no room above the board to move it. We were instead forced to wrap our cable over the motherboard’s surface.

The finished build looks like it should be an excellent performer.
- 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!