nice article, shame you didnt publish it earlyer i would o defenatly gone for the antec three hundred instead of the thermaltake VD2000BNS i got.
Same price range looks better and PSU at the bottom, i like that.

I would have liked you to put have put these cases through their paces a bit more, looking at how well a case is put together and what fans and tools you get with a case is one thing but it more useful to know just how well these cases keep your components cool.

You could set these case up with a Q6600 @ 3Ghz, HD 4870 512Mb and a 650 watt PSU (with stock coolers) and loop 3Dmark06/Vantage for an hour and see if the cases can keep the PC cool enough for that long.

Last, computer I built had an Antec 300 case....theres only a couple issues with it.

Side intake doesn't have a Dust filter. I had to use that fan as an exhaust until I can order one for it, which means that the case wont have positive airflow until then.

Its really heavy. This case weighs more then my Lian Li full tower case.

It doesn't have a removable Motherboard tray.

One thing that was well thought out was the 3 fans that were not included. While this sounds like a draw back, it isn't. The 3 optional fans that are availible are the 3 most visible fans in the case. Which means that you can customize the color of LED fans you want in it.

I used 3 green antec led 120 mm fans in this case and the air flow is phenomenal.

Interesting article,
However having owned the Lian Li B25 I disagree with your comments regarding complexity of installation of the hard drives. Having only built one other system I can say that it takes perhaps 30 sec more than normal to figure out what to do. Also I would have liked to see more details about noise regarding all cases. i can't say for the other but the B25 had sound dampening foam on the front door and on the top cover, the side panels were hollowed out further dampening the noise, the hard drives were connected using rubber (grommets I believe) and there were additional anti vibration features (cant remember) and the feet of the case also used rubber.

I use Antec cases and power supplies exclusively.
I used the Antec 300 and TruePower Trio 650 for my latest build.
The case is spacious and I didn't have a problem installing a full length graphic card. In the past with other Antec cases I've encountered difficulty installing full length graphic cards because it interferes with the installation of 3.5" drives.
The one thing I don't like about the Antec 300 is the power button. I find the button is weak and I have to gently press it to power on my computer.
The one thing I do like is the case ventilation. It’s laid out well and with installation of single 120mm intake fan my overclocked cpu and graphic card remain very cool.

Good article, but I'm missing a few things from it really.
1) You could've made a few pictures of the packaging. Cases are things your visitors can see, and you'd want them to be transported to you without taking any, visible or otherwise, damage. Silverstone do an outstanding job at this, and so does antec, but I don't think zalman or thermaltake would care much for the packaging quality (they care about flash stuff, not quality stuff after all). Also I'd have liked a list of noise levels for the cases.
Perhaps you can make another roundup, without limiting yourself to a specific case size and color, of potential gamer cases. And at the end of the roundup make a comparison list with external dimentions, motherboard orientation, weight and noise levels. I'm still using an old thermaltake lanfire chassis for a lan gamer, cause though it's ugly, it's very very light (3kg) and rather well built.

On another note - does anyone know if it is possible to only buy the side panel for that aerocool chassis ? I'd like to built such a door into a new top cover for my custom desktop system ...

whhaaaaat no cool master cases ??? shame on you guys, coolmaster has some of the best cases on teh amrket if not the best , (cosmos 1000 , the stacker 830's , a case with more fan space than any other on teh market) and then there is thier sweet mid tower the centurion 590 which i own it has spaces for 7 fans 4 of which can be any thing from 80mm to big 140mm the otehr three are locked at fiting just 120mm fans)

though this is a nice article i jsut can't believe you didnt review a single coolmaster case no other company offers a case in the mid- to full size tower with the fan slots that CM offers in those ranges of size

Attention Article Author: Siggy Moersch

Your mid-tower round up article is good. However laying out your article over 41 pages is too excessive. By the time I reached the 20th page I became bored of flipping through pages with only a few paragraphs on each page.
I'm certain your article could have fit on fewer pages. I believe one page for each case reviewed would provide a clean article layout.

oh and for teh record teh 590 centurion from cool master is the case i currently ahve , running temps for the main board are in the mid 20's (celcius) 140 mm on top(exhaust) 1 120 in the back (exhaust) 1 120mm in the front (intake) and two 120mm's on the side (top is set as an intake bottom as an exhaust)

my proc is a athlon 64 x2 5000+ black edition currently clocked at 3 ghz
i use a cool master hyper tx 2 cooler and runign temps are 24-28c load temps never go over 42 c

also my gf9600 gt is on a stock cooler its idel is low 30's c and it's load is around upper 40's never over 50

oh also of note the centurion 590 from coolmaster looks alot liekt eh antec 300 but with way more fans

Well it was called Quick Takes and it certainly was. It was informative to a point and introduced me to a few models I was unfamiliar with.
Not sure why you would base a recommendation on this information however.
Throw a couple overclocked 4850s and an overclocked C2D in those cases and measure the various temps and get a decibel reading from a fixed point. Those are the things I should know before buying a case.

Nice case collection, but what about Nvidia BIG cards recommended cases? In many cases the card will take a place of a hard drive or not fit at all.
Some recommendation can be at use for many folks.

ok now that i have fully read teh article i can say , my coolmaster centurion 590 beats every one of tehse cases hands down with the exception of the Aero cool model that has that huge 400mm fan and even then my coolmaster case stomps it in the price, the cool master centurion 590 can be gotten from newegg for 59. bucks and offfers better cooling options (up to 7 functional fan slots available (if you get an extra HD cage , 6 going with out of teh box) granted you have to buy all but two of the fans at only 10 dollars per fan this case still would beat all these others in price by cooling ability
also noted some of these cases didnt provide all teh cables you'd ned to get started while the 590 comes with both a IDE cable and a eSata 3gs cable and i agree with otuers you need to give more detail in hwo well these cases will actualy cool todays demanding hardware not to mention fit huge honky parts like a GF 280 or the massive cpu heat sink like a coolmaster hyper tx 2 (which i have and fits very easily into my centurion 590 case even with a side fan instaled right over the cpu heat sink!)

while the article is a good starting point for noobs , i would say it is ho hum for those of us with more exprience in building demanding PC's , saddly most your readers are teh of teh more exprienced side fo things , you need a follow up that actually rates these cases at their cooling capabilities and interior space WITH compnents installed , sure a case may look roomy with a empty hold or with just a few compents installs using stock heat sinks , you need to really run these cases through the gauntlet though given yoru readers are demanding builders for teh most part , yoiu need to laod them with every component possible , extra fans (where applicable) big heat sinks for the cpu (or liquid cooling systems), and big heat sinks for vid cards , (or a series of sli-ed/crossfired cards runnign with thier rather large stock heat sinks load them down with multiple hard drives and disck drives , then rate thier space , heat and cooling factors and give your readers a really good idea of what they, as exprienced builders , can do with these cases

the article again as i states is not a bad article it is great , just great for noobs , and not the kind of builders that most your readers are .

@ demonhorde665 : I know I've told you before, but I will again! Please spend a few more seconds writing your posts. There's no need for four posts about how good your chassis is. One post would suffice. But what's worse is, that your posts are riddled with typos. A typo here and there is expected in comments, but you're almost typing more words wrongly than correct - and it does appear you can spell them correct if you were looking at what you wrote, before you hit the submit button.

On a side note, I think coolermaster may not be represented because they didn't send in any case in time - it's entirely possible they were asked to take part.

I agree I would have liked to see CM in the round up, after all I have a RC-690 that I've customized for a nice water system but its like neiro said, its entirely likely that they simply didn't get a case sent in THG in time for the round up. Anyway interesting article but I'm not looking to go into another mid-tower at the moment I need more room for my water loop, so I'd like to a see a round up of the full tower cases

i used to buy thermaltake cases for my builds but i always found the cases kinda "floppy". They felt like they were made out of tinfoil and never liked to drag it around but, since i've tried an antec case for a build i kept using those instead. Sure they're heavy as hell but at least you're sure that your hardware inside is safe and the case won't fall appart when you pick it up.

I like antec because you can buy a few of their cases with good power supplies already in there and save a few bucks, but in general I don't really like their cases. None of those I've tried to install stuff into (primarily the cheaper, smaller ones) felt like they'd been thought thru. Cable routing always seemed to be a huge issue, and in some cases the stuff's really badly designed.
One example would be an antec sonata (forgot version). Sleek looking piano black chassis. But the plastic front felt like it was gonna come off any second (still hasn't though), and the power supply they supplied, while brilliant in specs, featured too short cables for the sata drives. So before I was done building it I had already broken a sata power connector as I thought brute force would help make it long enough (it usually does with antec problems). Also the chassis was rather tiny once a motherboard, two harddrives, a dvd and a graphics card were installed.
Anyway I've heard a lot of good stuff about the 900 and p150 apart from noise, so perhaps the bigger cases are good. But I don't really like the small ones except for the value they sport when comming with a psu installed.

You ought to check out this case as a possible entry, with the added modular power supply, 2x 120mm fans and 2x 80mm fans, as well as the fold-out motherboard trays, it is well worth note. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6811156209

cool article but why pay over 100 bucks for a case , when you can get a cooler master 690 or antec 900 for example for under 100 bucks . why not do a gaming case review for under 100 bucks ? you might have to do a little more research to find one you like , but the money you save you can buy a game and have somthing to play and enjoy all your hard work building your pc .

According to the specs you listed, the AeroCool DOES have e-SATA, yet you list the supposed absence as a minus.

Also, is it better to have positive or negative pressure in a case? I.e should more fans be pulling air in, or pushing air out? These cases differed in their approach (some had two 120s pushing air out, while the AeroCool as a giant 400 pulling air in).

I was always under the impression pulling more air in, and directing that air onto the components, was better than pushing air out, and allowing the air to cut its own path in and around the components (where it might miss some).