The Antidote To Tedium: 11 Midi Tower Cases Bring Excitement to the Desktop

Little Room For Drives

Upon opening the case cover, you’re struck not only by the 350W power supply, but also by the austere interior. The Antec midi tower uses preinstalled drive rails for the installation of 5.25" drives. The few drives that will fit go into a built-in modular cage. Special screws and sealing rings acoustically isolate the two 3.5" drives from the rest of the case. There are two extra 3.5" mounting assemblies intended for ZIP or floppy drives, which can be used for additional hard drives if needed. There is no acoustic isolation for these, however.

The case has plenty of room for extension cards, and even long PCI cards fit easily into four of the seven slots. The SLK26050-BQE uses metal screws to anchor cards, but we drew a blank when looking around inside the case for them. It turned out that Antec put them in a special accessories box at the rear. This box is so small and inconspicuous that it is easily overlooked.

The workmanship of the Antec is exemplary. Almost all edges are filed, so there is little danger of injury when installing hardware. A little more space for hard drives would have been better, though.

Austere : not much room for 3.5" hard disks

Guide rails hold the 5.25" drives in place

Only a few drives fit in the cage, which can be removed