SILVERSTONE Black Aluminum / Steel Lascala Series LC13B-E ATX Media Center / HTPC Case

Pros: Lots of Room for future upgrades. 1 Cage for Disc drives and 2 cages for HDDs. Has 2 fans in the case. A little expensive. Overall great build quality and sturdy. Front Panel cables are labelled well. Rubberized base for reduced vibrations. Nice black finish.

Cons: Heavy, not as good looking as the Moneual cases. Of course those start at $250.

Other Thoughts: Great for first timer. Cable management is easy. This case is big (its an ATX case) so might be too big for a regular sized TV Stand/AV Stack.

Pros: I ordered a full ATX board by mistake and compounded it by buying a case to fit!

Nice quality construction fit and finish, with some design flaws.

I mounted the PSU with the fan drawing from inside the case. Too bad all the screws don't fit that wa

Cons: Quality construction, but flawed design.

Despite large dimensions space was tight in critical locations. The center drive rack wouldn't clear the SATA plugs and the 3.5 inch right side rack barely cleared the main power plug and pushed the wires against the outer memory stick with my Gigabyte GA-A75-UD4H FM1 AMD A75 (Hudson D3) full ATX board. Couldn't close front cover with headphone jack in place.

Other Thoughts: I recommend you put "FULL" in front of "ATX" in the product description of ATX mobos..

Snugly fitting top cover has easily bent tabs that require care while setting top cover on case about a half inch or so from the forward position then sliding forward into place. If you plop it down anywhere you will likely bend the tabs and the top won't slide into place.
The tabs can be straightened but may break if done too often or bent too far.

The designers need to spend more time assembling computers.
Due to the high price of shipping cases, it is imperative to get a good one the first try. I'm much less likely to buy another mail order case in the future unless I can be more sure of a good fit internally.

Pros: Good looking case.
No sharp edges.
Lots of room for extra hard drives.
Works great with a micro ATX mobo.

Cons: Will be tight with full ATX mobo.

Other Thoughts: First build, HTPC. Only spent about two hours building inside of this thing. Went great. Cages were easy to remove and install hardware. Couldn't be happier. Bought a modular PSU to cut down on extra cable laying in case.


Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z/Gen3 Z68
Intel i5-2500k
Kingston 2x4GB Hyper X Grey Series
Antec BP550 Plus PSU
Corsair Force Series 3 120GB SSD
WD Caviar Black 1.5TB HDD
Samsung Black Blu-ray combo drive

Will wait for HDD prices to come down to add more storage for all my media.

Pros: This is a very well made case; no sharp edges. Fit and finish makes it good looking too.

Cons: None really.

Other Thoughts: If you're using a full ATX or one of the latest GPUs, this is not the case for you. It's very tight fitting everything in. With my card--Nvidia 6800 and a hard drive, I couldn't make it work. I also used an SSD and could get it all to work. A conventional HD and this card just don't fit. It would have brrn muvh better with a micro ATX, so I'd consider going that way. .If you have the space in your HT cabinet or shelf go with something an inch or two larger (around 18" deep). None of this detracts from the quality of the product. Just something to think about.

Pros: This case is built like a tank. Has high HDD capacity (6x HDDs + 2 more with 5.25 to 3.5 brackets). Along with this, it's a super nice looking case! The brushed-aluminum look, painted black, with 2x simple blue LEDs indicating Power & HDD activity is clean and simple and doesn't need a special power supply, configuration & there's nothing to program, break, malfunction or burn-out.

Cons: Larger high-end video-cards may not fit with one of the 3x HDD drive-cages installed. This isn't a design-flaw. The case would have to be a good 3-inches deeper to accommodate these video cards with a drive-cage. HOWEVER, you don't need a gaming-quality video-card to render crisp, clear recorded 'TV' on a HD-TV. If you're building a DVR, build a DVR, not a combo DVR-Gaming box!

Other Thoughts: I used this case to rebuild my DVR of 3-years with a full ATX board 'upgrading' from a micro-atx (re-using older components). It has 2x PCI and 1x PCI-Express-x1 (dual) HD tuners (4x) total. The board has 2x more PCI-Express-x1 ports & 1x PCI slot still open! ;) I can go up to 9x HD tuners!. I currently have 6TB of storage with 3x HDDs with plenty of room for 'repeat night' expansion!

If you're looking for a sturdy, clean-looking HTPC case with lots of capacity at a great price, buy this case!

Pros: It does what you need it to do and the top is just big enough to slap 3x 120.3 radiators on it. (after some modding of course ;) )

Cons: Wire managment is almost impossible without running behind the plastic front panel.

In order to fit my 6950s in there I had to remove the floppy bay and put the HDD bay in its place.

HDD bay is in a terrible location. Unless you have a small card be ready to move it in the floppy bays place or you will not be able to hook up hard drives (even with a 460 I could not connect them.

Other Thoughts: Read the Instructions... If you do not you will spend hours trying to put your dang CD drive in and then after 3 hours or trying to take the screw out of the bay with plyers you realize you could have taken the bay out.... lol

Other than the cons i listed I have a 4 because it is a truly nice case and the build flaws I stated are mainly because I am asking this to be a desktop pc in an HTPC case.

Specs:
2600K with EK Supreme HF CU block
2x 6950 HIS with EK blocks
Gigabyte Z68A-UD7 mobo
Corsair HX1000
Corsair Vengence 2x4gb 1600 RAM
3x 3TB HDD
Gskill Sniper 120gb SSD OS drive
This case OFC
3x 120.3 XSPC RX360 Rads with Yate meds push pull
MCP35X pump
Phobya res

Pros: It is a very solid case, personaly after reading the reviews and i was worried about the ease of acess but I found no problems.

Cons: This case will not fit a full size graphics card unless you do not use the fan in front of the h/d's "kinda weak for an htpc" . Im not to sure if this case is designed for a specific mobo . It will pull hot air into the cpu bye way of the rear exaust fans .

Other Thoughts: Should have swapped out the position of the usb userface to other bay.

Pros: Very nice full sized case. (It really, actually, is 17.00" wide, not 17 1/8" or 17 3/16" like some of the cases.)

It blends in with Audio components quite well. Fits most shelves, about 7 3/4" tall though, so check your available shelf height.

The fans blow out the back, so close side & top walls around enclosure aren't such a big problem, but you will want an open-backed shelf.

Holds a full sized ATX MB. Not quite as important as it once was. With the LGA 775 processors, micro ATX MB always had on-board video that ran HOT and couldn't be turned off. Sandy Bridge has changed that. Now, with a micro ATX LGA 1155 MB with H61 or Z68 BIOS, you have a choice of using the on-CPU video or not, and the cooling works (it's the CPU heat sink).

Very nice face plate, & sturdy case. The HD mount let a little 80 GB WD Blue Caviar drive run almost dead quiet.

Cons: The 80 mm case fans were loud on a build using an older Asus MB with poor fan speed control (couldn't run the fans slow enough to quiet them down. Installed two of the Arctic Cooling 80 mm case fans which ran slow enough to be almost silent at 6'.

Other Thoughts: Otherwise, very nice case.

Yes, I'd buy it again.

I built for quiet operation and I typically install a passively cooled video card and a Xonar sound card. I appreciate the room and the two 80 mm fans running at ≈ 600 RPM still move enough air to allow me to run my Arctic Cooling CPU heat sink without its 92 mm fan (on an LGA 775 E8400 Wolfdale).

Pros: -Silverstone name/ design
-Looks good in cabinet next to other HT devices

Cons: - Bad design on the hdd side, had little to no room for additional add-in space.
while not hitting something on the motherboard, add in card, etc. , I can find other budget cases thats design is alot more modular.

Other Thoughts: Simple re-config of the internal trays and mounting options and this case will be just fine otherwise. If you are going to stick a SSD in place and just use it for streaming off an external source then this case would not be a bad option.

Pros: Sleek simple design.
Multiple case fans included, with spaces for additional fans.
Very high quality materials used in construction, you won't encounter any sharp edges on the inside.
Can hold 6 Hard Drives.

Cons: The PSU grating could be larger to accommodate the sizeable fans being used in modern PSUs.
There could be more space between the Hard Drives.

Other Thoughts: These cases are amazing and further solidifies Silverstone as a company that makes incredible products.
If you are looking for a medium priced case for a HTPC build I would say this is the case for you.