2003 Winter Case Review Part 1: MicroATX Case Madness

Superflower/TTGI TT-101

From Superflower/TTGI, we received the TT-101, which is Superflower/TTGI's MicroATX offering. It is black in color, and features a clear acrylic front bezel that is quite attractive. Our initial inspection found that the TTGI TT-101 offers many of the conveniences found in other Superflower/TTGI case models. Let's look closely at the TT-101 and see what other features we find.

TTGI has obviously spent a great deal of time and effort working on their MicroATX offering. The TT-101 certainly is one of the best configured offerings that we received in this MicroATX roundup. Powered by two 60mm fans in the rear of the chassis and a single 60mm fan in the front of the chassis, this case has no problem keeping its components cool. While the case does not offer the slick screwless assembly found in other cases, the TT-101 does offer a good number of innovative features to take notice of. First, as with other MicroATX designs, this case features a removable bay for the 5.25" devices that can be completely and easily removed. Another interesting feature is the addition of two internal 2.5" laptop-style hard drive bays next to the 5.25" bay that allow for the addition of two 2.5 inch laptop-style hard drive devices. This idea is particularly unique, as notebook hard drives offer quieter performance than do conventional 3.5" hard drives. This is the first case we have seen that features a mounting scheme to be included within the case. In low noise environments, the use of laptop-style hard drives would be quite beneficial; however, notebook-style hard drives are not currently available in capacities beyond 80 Gigabytes. This may hamper some who plan to use the TT-101 in a Personal Video Recorder/Digital Video Recorder (PVR/DVR) configuration due to the fact that these drives lack the storage capacity found in their 3.5" brethren.