SILVERSTONE Black Aluminum front panel, 0.8 mm SECC body Lascala Series LC20-B ATX Media Center / HTPC Case

Pros: Much bigger than I expected from the reviews. Beautiful front panel, looks great with my A/V equipment. It just looks and works great, what more could you ask for.

Cons: It'd be nice if it came with fans, but I new about that so it wasnt worth taking an egg. The power LED is bright, but its a simple thing to unplug and be happy.

Other Thoughts: I'm not sure what the other people where talking about when they said the wires need to be re-routed. I rerouted the power switch wire simply for conveinience, but there was no problem with them were they were. I am using a micro atx though so maybe they wouldnt be long enough with an atx. It would have been nice to have the motherboard on a tray so i could run the wires behind that for appearance, but then youd have to sacrifice height so chose your evil I suppose.

Pros: Case looks good. Bought as I constructed entire new unit into my older full tower ATX case and wanted to move my old parts into this case for a media center.

Cons: Lots of screws. Easy to drop them into the case on assembly with my chubby fingers. Optic drive holder sits over my main power connection and IDE connectors making for extremely tight fit. Using a full size ATX board makes wiring routing also difficult.

Other Thoughts: If the case was just an inch deeper, the drive bays would not have to sit on top of the wiring. This was part of my fourth build with components from New Egg. Delivery was quick as usual.

Pros: Great Appearance
Spacious interior (for a HTPC case)
Lots of H.D Space!
Decent amount of fan options
Well thought out Cooling system (when fans are installed)
Very nice sold construction
space for cable routing

Cons: Power supply mounting is in a weird direction for most Pull in push out air system power supply
Not Tool-free
Hard to read directions
Too many things to unscrew when doing a simple HD swap, or CD rom drive swap

Other Thoughts: Great case for anyone looking to get into HTPCs, the space allows for a greater amount of expandability in the future vs smaller micro ATX htpc cases, in this case cooling is well thought out.

I am using this as a Gaming HTPC (total opposite of HTPC mantra i know) and it still stays very cool considering its air cooled, and its small foot print vs a regular tower case.

I am running a i7 920 oc to 3.00 ghz
6gb ddr3 Gskill ripjaw memory
3TB storage in raid 0
2 HD4870 Asus darktop
750 Watt corsair powersupply

Pros: - Beautiful front panel. Best part I like is that the optical drive and card reader's face is flush with the case and it does not try to mask that face with something else, and still neatly hidden behind the flaps.
- Solid construction. There are a TON of screws. 4 to remove the top panel, 4 to remove that middle bar under it, 2 to remove the optical drive cage, 4 to remove the 3.5" external drive cage, 4 to remove the 6 HDD cage. You get the idea. But once it's all put together, the computer will be rock solid.
- Padded HDD cage to reduce noise from the hard drives.
- Very spacious. Can easily fit a mATX mobo without breaking a sweat.
- Also accommodates a full size power supply.
- 4 USB ports in the front and one 1394 port.
- Comes with all necessary screws.

Cons: - Does not come with a single case fan. Has space for 2 in the back, one on the side and two in front of the HDD cage, but Silverstone does not include a single case fan. Had to keep my case open for one night because I hadn't received the case fans I had ordered until then.
- Motherboard is too close to the right edge of the case. I couldn't fit a 25mm thick case fan on the side vent, because it was right over the CPU FAN connector on my ASUS M3N78-EM motherboard. Need to get a 20mm or 15mm thick fan for the side vent. Although, I already have front two fans for intake and rear two for exahust, so my case dosen't really need it at the moment.

Other Thoughts: This case looks beautiful in my black TV stand under an equally beautiful Samsung HL61A750 HD DLP TV. I went through many cases to finally land on this one for my first HTPC.

Note: Keep a long philips screw driver with a magnetized head for this. You'll need it for those 200 different screws ;).

Pros: Solidly built. Quality of build is good. Complete set of parts and accessories. Good for 4 hard drives, DVD burner and a graphics card. Plenty of cooling options.

Cons: Adding a 5th or 6th drive competes for space with the modern graphics cards.
Had difficulty with the DVD cage fit - tolerances.

Other Thoughts: Start slowly, plan where all the cables are going to go and how the heat is going to be exhausted from the case. By using low noise and/or low power components, a very good high end HTPC can be put together.

Hard drives get warm (not hot) and I can't decide if I should add front fans for them.

Pros: Looks great in my entertainment center. PERFECT size! (any bigger, and it wouldn't fit in most entertainment centers or component racks.) Sturdy, high quality construction. Plenty of room for expansion. Space for THREE 80mm exhaust fans (a MUST, if you ask me), and two 120mm fans in the front. Space for LCD/VFD screen on the front panel.

Cons: Okay, so the PSU is on the "wrong" side, which poses two problems. 1) the PSU fan doesn't exhaust any hot air from the case, and 2) some PSU/mobo combinations won't work without some extensions. Also, it doesn't come with the VFD display, but I was able to buy that separately.

Other Thoughts: There are some complaints about this case being cramped, but come on people! This is a HTPC case! It's the exact same dimensions as my Denon 3805 receiver, and looks right at home sitting underneath it. To all those people who think the case should be bigger: YOU SHOULDN'T BE BUYING AN HTPC CASE! Given the exterior dimensions (which are PERFECT), it's amazing that there's as much space as there is. Sure it's tight, but there's plenty of room for my three hard drives, DVD drive, monster CPU cooler, 3 PCI cards, and video card. Also, having space for 3 80mm exhaust fans allows for the use of quiet, low CFM fans. Three quiet fans are much quieter than one loud one. I have three exhaust fans running on 5V. Almost silent, but still provides sufficient airflow.

Oh, and I thought this came with the VFD display, which it doesn't. I ordered it directly from SilverStone. It's a MUST HAVE! It looks great, and works beautifully with MythTV (and I'm sure others as well).

Pros: great looking case, plenty of expansion slots, room for 6 hard drives, i am currently using five. keeps very cool when you use all 4 fan slots.

Cons: a little tight around hd bay, atleast with my MB.

Other Thoughts: i have this case almost clear full. and it stays very cool
great case for the money especially if you dont want or need the front lcd panel.

Pros: Looks nice in the entertainment center.

Cons: PS on wrong side - doesn't provide for additional venting of hot air; Couldn't use heatsinks on RAM with both DVD drives installed; Can't use most of the HDD slots or expansion card slots when using the front fans; everything except power supply has to come out to get motherboard out; Rear 80mm fans don't accept Silverstone's oversized fans designed for 80 mm cut-outs; Case rivets blocked proper insertion of both PCI Exp x16 slots; Poor case tolerance on bottom of expansion card's slot made insertion of all expansion cards impossible w/o using something to push in on tab from outside when inserting card; Just very hard to work with.

Other Thoughts: Once you get it working, just pray you don't have to service it.

Pros: Looks Great. Is higher quality than other Silverstone cases I have used. (Didn't need modifications)

Doesn't require any changes to your DVD drives. Can hold a ton of hard drives. Great fan options. Only one button is visible on the front which helps out.

Cons: Power supply is placed on opposite side of the board. I had to make an extension for the 4 prong p4 power cable. The 24pin ATX cord barely fit. No finger screws to access board.

Other Thoughts: It may actually be bullet proof from the front.

Pros: I found the case easy to install parts into. I used an Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe in two installs with this case with no problems at all. All pieces fit well and look very clean. I would have to say if you are using the right motherboard you may be able to fit 7 hard drives.

Cons: LED's are very bright during operation. I do wish the "PUSH" would be a sticker instead of being stenciled on. I too found that the space between the hard drives and the video card to be very close. In my install I had six hard drives in each install with two fans in the hard drive cage and two in the back where the power supply is traditionally.

Other Thoughts: Great case for a home theatre pc install. Leaves plenty of room for expansion. In both instances I used Antec Truepower Trio 650watt power supplies which do not have modular cables which leads to a very packed case with all the hard drive bays in use.