Cooler Master Elite 430 - Mid Tower Computer Case with All-Black Interior and Windowed Side Panel

Pros: For $30 (discount, promo, and rebate), I have yet to find this case's equal.

All-black interior, beautiful to look at.

Solid plastic side window, well-placed front panel buttons and inputs. Cooler Master reliability. Up to ATX boards without all the extra bulk.

Enough fan mounts to blow the computer across the room. Included blue fan. Dust covers on the fan mounts not in use.

Cons: The list price on this case ($60 + $4 S/H) is bologna.

The metal for the frame and especially the sides is unusually thin. The plastic on the front panel seems pretty cheap.

Way too few tool-less clamps, and the ones that are included are solid, but really weird to operate. I prefer the holders from earlier cases that had sort of a "screw" clamp to them.

And as other reviewers have noted, an average-sized PSU will half-cover the only bottom fan-mount. There's plenty of room to avoid this, not sure why Cooler Master placed the mount where they did...

Overall Review: Important note: bottom-mounted PSU. The first time I built in this case, I about had to stretch the (already short) 24-pin motherboard power connector to reach the plug. It wouldn't be any different than a top-mounted, EXCEPT a Micro-ATX or Mini-ITX board is going to be on the opposite side of the case, unlike top-mounted cases, where small motherboards are the same distance from the PSU.

As long as the price stays at $30-$35, I'll keep buying this case for customers. Except for the lack of sturdiness, all my complaints are assuming this case is valued at $60. When the price drops to $30, I say buy this without a second thought.

Pros: See other thoughts first. Good looking case, tool-less drive mounts, extra space for fans. Overall, pretty spacious interior. Good layout for important bits, bottom mounted PSU, top oriented front ports. Only thing that would make it better would be to rotate the hard drive bays 90 degrees.

Cons: See other thoughts first. This second one I bought, was so badly damage, that the space for the back panel punchout... wasn't even rectangular anymore, it wasn't just that space that was bent, the entire case didn't even stand up straight because it had been so badly bent. I don't think this was the fault of the shippers either, because the box appeared to be in quite good condition, and the case was packed neatly into the box, surrounded by foam, as you would expect. By sheer bruteforce, I managed to make this case work for me, as I was in a hurry and couldn't afford the time to RMA it. It still doesn't sit flat.

Overall Review: I've bought two of these and had vastly different experiences with them, the 3 egg rating reflects that. You can consider the cons to be my review of the second one. Despite all that, I still like this case, I'm just highly suspect due to the circumstances, I could only imagine somebody at CoolerMaster dropped my case and packaged it anyways.