SILVERSTONE Black Aluminum / Steel Lascala Series SST-LC10B-E-USB3.0 ATX Media Center / HTPC Case

Pros: Pictures dont do it justice, It really LOOKS great in person, very solid brushed aluminum face. Sturdy and heavy.
Price isnt SO bad.. with a rebate (which is to complicated a procedure, treat your customers will alittle more respect, dont make us jump through hoops and flip backwards to get $10 back)

Cons: The front fans attacth to the HDD cage, this is tricky and means with the use of (i used a HIS ICEQ 7870 2gb5) which is like 11+ long and 5.5" high. It FITS!! The bar across the top will hit the heatpipes but its an easy fix, either dont use it or cut away alil on the side of that bar.. Simple.
But using this card meant removing one of the HDD cages which meant I could only mount ONE fan in the front, I wanted to use 2 90mm fans in front.
I could CUT the hdd cage still.. but thats gonna be a pain.
The front wiring seems a bit clustered and in the way of the afformentioned front intake fan issues.

Other Thoughts: People complain about assembly, but its an HTPC, supposed to take your time and wire it slowly
I had slight trouble, but thats part of the fun for me. It all wired up beautifully in the end
Used a
750w Fully Mod OCZ psu
Gigabyte 990fx ud3 atx mobo
AMD phenom 965 be
HIS Iceq 7870
16gb ram
Samsung 120gb SSD (hidden nicely under the optical drive, room for 2 there I believe)
3TB Seagate HDD
1 90mm front intake fan.

My temps do not exceed 55c.. that video card stays under 50c, the cpu usually about 50c, while playing graphics intense video games. So it all stays cool in this case.

Pros: Lots of drive space, great cooling setup. Looks great in a stack of components. Built in optic drive look works very well.

Cons: Tight when using a Full ATX board. Wiring gets a bit a mess when running more than a couple of drives.

Other Thoughts: I have built 4 machines on this box, I have tried others but always return to this one. Lots of room to expand and the cooling on this thing with two silent 80's mounted up front is superb.

I agree with others above assemble in the order given by the instructions, and all is well.

Great HTPC platform with lots of room to grow.

Pros: Heavy duty solid case
Front panel design great
Takes ATX motherboard
Takes ATX standard PSU

Cons: Horizontal configuration build challenges

Selection of CPU coolers is limited by space even in this relatively large HTPC case. CPU fans are notoriously loud as well. I found the Silverstone NT01-E, Item#: N82E16835220032 cooler to be perfect for this case. It is designed to work with the rear twin 80mm fans provided.

Other Thoughts: This is a solid case with a beautiful and functional front panel. However the horizontal configuration of the case causes build challenges for those of us use to building vertical desktop PC's.
First, read the build instructions that come with the case. I did not, and had to take apart and reassemble several times because I followed the wrong installation order.

The DVD/BD drive is forced to a low internal mounting position because of the front door location. I had no problem with the installation or operation of the optical drive however the bottom of the drive is directly above the 24 pin ATX power plug. I found the best way to route the 24 pin ATX cable was through the small space under the optical drive and onto the motherboard from the side.

The ATX power supply unit is very close to the motherboard and the connections on this side of the mother board should be made first if you are adding any cards that ride close to the PSU.

The biggest issue I had was cabling up the SATA connections. Mount your drives in the removable fixtures first and then install them in the case as suggested by the instructions. There is room on the front of the drive fixtures to mount 80mm fans if you like and there is an intake grill surrounding the front plate. After everything is in then run your SATA signal and power cables. If you attempt to take out and re-install drives and drive fixtures, plugging and unplugging SATA cables, you have a much greater chance of breaking the plastic guides around the SATA plugs. Like I did. This is not a big deal if you break a cable (which I did) but popping off the SATA plug guides on your new 2TB HDD is, well, bad. I have built a lot of PC's and I attribute this problem to the horizontal arrangement of the drives and the limited vertical room to access the plugs. Also the standard power SATA plugs are spaced for a vertical arrangement and I found it impossible to power drives in two separate drive fixtures with the same SATA power line. Bottom line - if you have to plug or unplug your SATA connections in this case be careful.

Pros: Great Looking
Solid Construction
Lots of 2.5" HDD Bays
Great Power Button

Cons: HDD Caddie overhangs the motherboard by about 2"

Not enough space inside, harder to work on than most laptops

Really should only fit mATX
It advertised as having an unlimited PSU size capacity, which; is true, but only if you remove three of the HDD caddies. Then if you want to fit a long graphics card you have to remove the other three HDD caddies leaving only one working HDD bay...

I had to go out and buy a new shorter PSU and had to limit myself to a GTX 660 graphics card because of the size limitations of this case.

Other Thoughts: I have a coolmax ZU-800 modular power supply which barely fits... In order to plug in the HDD bays I have to remove the PSU and reinstall it only after everything else is plugged in. Sometime a cable falls out or breaks though, making the process a real challenge. I recommend getting a PSU with low profile power plugs and low profile sata cables to make installation little easier.

Either that or buy a larger case... I would have given this case 5 eggs if only it were two inches longer and the sata drives did not overhang the motherboard by almost two inches.

Pros: 7x 3.5" bays & 2 5.25" slots.
Plenty of room for a beefy HTPC setup.
Full size ATX support.
USB 3.0.
Hard Drive cooling supports 2x 80mm fans.
Build quality is very good.

Cons: Some areas are a little tight to work in.
Initially seems fairly noisy (tweak your fans in bios).
Overall size may be a considerable factor.

Other Thoughts: This is an upgrade case that has delivered well for me. The extra space provided is more than adequate for the average needs of a HTPC and leaves room for expansion in the future.
Build specs:
ASRock Z77 Extreme4 LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard //
Intel Pentium G630T Sandy Bridge 2.3GHz LGA 1155 35W Dual-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics BX80623G630T //
GeIL EVO Veloce Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model //
Intel Pentium G630T Sandy Bridge 2.3GHz LGA 1155 35W Dual-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics BX80623G630T //
2x 2TB HDD RAID1
2x 2TB HDD RAID1
1x 500GB HDD
1x 250GB HDD

Pros: Matches most mid to high end AV equipment perfectly, clean look, and well thought out.

Front comes with 2 usb 3.0 and a down converter encase you don't have that option on your mobo. Fits full sized hardware, and has tons of room for hard drives.

Cons: Lots of screws to get it apart, but it is a HTPC so do it once and call it a day.

Silverstone is proud of their products ($$$.... Life goes on).

Wish it had two drive slots... even it one was hard to get to.

Other Thoughts: I love this thing, the fact that it matches the high-end Yamaha, Denon, and Sony receivers (and probably the other high output models) makes this a huge selling point for me.

Pros: Clean, elegant look
Lots of space for drive
Quiet fans
Good placement of fan mounts for the future.
Lots of room
USB 3

Cons: I don't think I have ever had to use so many screws in my life. Just to get one of the hard drive cages out it is 6 screw. There is no rail system or anything for the drives to make it easier. Despite being a big case it is very tight inside. The HD cages and Optical drive cage over cage deeper mother boards to a point you can't access the power and SATA ports. The DVD/BT slot has no real guides so you have to do a lot of trial and error to get it in place to work with the front.

Other Thoughts: Overall I do like this case, but can't justify better than an average score because while it is a beauty on the outside it is a beast inside to work with. Once I got everything hooked up I realized I needed to do a simple task of moving a SATA connection due to a RAID setup. Just to do that I had to take out a drive cage that took 6 screws and then there was barely room to get it out without damaging components.

Again I am overall happy with this case and have no plans to replace it. It is a good case if you are looking for something that looks great and you do not plan on working with it a lot. Just be aware it is not the type of system that everything slides into place and you are done.