SilverStone PS08B Black High-strength plastic and meshed front panel MicroATX Mid Tower Computer Case

Pros: Very compact and lightweight; ideal for a very small media server. It fits extremely easily under my desk.

I got this case to fit all of my leftover PC components using an old Sapphire Radeon 4870 and an Athlon II 235e processor with a Biostar DDR2 motherboard. And it works to play SWTOR and Battlefield 3 very well.

Cons: Cable management is very hard in this case. Also long graphics card such as my Radeon 4870 will probably hit the back end of the 3.5" hard drive. However most people would not use more than 2 hard drives in this very compact build. Also this case is very low end Silverstone so don't expect Temjin style.

Pros: USB 3.0
Traditional drive mounting
I/O on the front instead of the side

Cons: Drive mounts obstructed by CPU/Heatsink, so install drives first. Minor annoyance if you add later.

Other Thoughts: Picked this up over the Fractal Design Core 1000, which has USB 2.0, strange and limited drive mounting, and I/O on the side... and this is cheaper. Best combination of features/value in mATX.

Pros: cheap - got 2 of these on sale fro 2 new builds for work, not a bad little case.

Cons: Front USB Ports failed on one of the cases- so no it is not human error- I bought 2 of them and one works and the other doesn't. Of coarse, you are done with the build by the time you try them out, download all the updates for the drivers, etc. and Returning is a major pain so i guess i will use the MOBO's USB's in the back- not good!! So I guess you have a 50% chance of having no USB ports on the front of the case- that is what your chancing if you buy this case based on my experience.

Manufacturer Response:

Thank you very much for purchasing SilverStone. Please contact our US office directly and they should be able to help you get a replacement USB front port module without you having to return the entire case.

909-465-9596
usasupport@silverstonetek.com

Pros: 2 USB3.0 front panel connectors, small sized case (if that's what you're looking for), has a front filter and easy to remove front cover that makes cleaning the filter a snap. It looks like there's plenty of room for a long video card (although I didn't get far enough in the current build to actually test the limits).

Cons: From the get go I was disappointed with the quality control. The holes in the side panel screws weren't even lined up with the body of the case... nor were the holes for mounting the power supply. After mounting the powers supply (modular Rosewill Capstone) and motherboard (ASRock Z77 Pro4-M), I was shocked to see how difficult it was to fit a small sized DVD burner as it was bottoming out against the ATX power cable coming out of the power supply. The real deal killer for me came as I tried to mount a pair of 3.5" hard drives and realized I couldn't easily do it. I had to take out the memory (GSkill Ripjaws X) just to have any chance of slipping the hard drives in place... only to find it nearly impossible due to the CPU cooler assembly being in the way. Mind you, I'm not using a CM Hyper 212 cooler (it wouldn’t fit in this case anyway because the case is too narrow). I'm using the stock Intel cooler and that's about as low profile as it comes. It's not so bad maneuvering the first drive into place, but when putting in the second drive, I found it was jamming against the cooler. I forced it in without breaking anything, but adding a 3rd HDD is not possible without removed the CPU cooler all together due to the angle you have to slide them in. Once the pair of hard drives were mounted, memory slot 4 is completely unusable. And, the back of the hard drives are right up against the heat sink on the memory in slot 3.

Other Thoughts: Overall, I was very disappointed in this case. I mean, really... what hardware configuration did they have in mind when they designed this thing. I'm sure I'll find an ultra basic build that'll work in this case sometime down the road. But, it's going to be hard for me to get excited about using it.

Pros: Amazing built quality for the price, easy to work with.
They really thought about the little stuff (e.g, supplying a wrench-screwdriver adapter).

Cons: USB 3.0 connector without backward compatibility (if your mobo just have usb 2.0 headers the front ports are useless).

Kensington lock slot doesn't lock the side panel (means nobody can steal this desktop but they can open it and take the drive).

Pros: this case has a cut out in the mother board tray to make it easy for swapping out the heatsink bracket. so you dont have to take the whole mother board out of the case for an after market heatsink.

it has the right kind of usb3.0 plug in to hook up to the mother board, so their is no need to buy an adapter cable.

great air flow and it has a reset button that you can press your finger

Cons: n/a