Received the case Thursday as promised, the case was well packaged and there were no signs of damage, having unpacked the case was surprised how light an all aluminium case is compared to the steel tower I was using before.
Now the interesting bit building it with all my PC bits. Slid the cover off which was very lightweight, again all aluminium. Started with my M/B a full size ATX Asus A7N8X Deluxe this was straightforward with the standoffs provided, a Zalman ZM400A PSU went in without any probs,there were issues with using some PSUs in the case maybe this has been resolved but had no others to test .
To install the drives one cage slides out to enable access to both sides, inserted the DVD drives and a floppy no probs so far, continued to install my two hard drives in the cage which Id previously taken out, the cage has three positions for 3.5inch drives, the hard drives after a bit of messing about need to be in the top and bottom leaving the centre for a floppy etc.
The fiddly bit was inserting the cage back into the case due to the MB being quite close to the cage.
Started cabling up realised my round IDE cables werent long enough and also were too bulky so reverted back to ribbons, inserting power to the bottom hard drive was a pain cos the plug over lapped the M/B had to take out both rear screws and push up the drive to plug the cable in.
All my PCI card went in no probs including a Radeon 9500 with a Zalman Heatpipe.
The case has only one exhaust fan so was concerned with heat etc(had a slow speed 80mm fan directly on the AGP card in my old case).
Connected everything up and fired it up, the case was noisier than my old case with just 3 fans,gonna buy a a Rheobus 3.5inch fan controller to sort that out and insert that between the hard drives may also insert two extra fans on the case where there are ventilation holes. Will also put some sound absorption sheets on the cover.
How does it look in the flesh, very nice Ive not seen any Accents etc but in my opinion it looks pretty cool, M/B temps were on idle diode 30°C,socket 35°C, case 24°C .In summary Im very happy with the case it took my full ATX MB and my ATX psu and two DVD drives, this was the reason I bought it, drawbacks were a fiddly install (I didnt read the instructions though) lack of thumb screws but thats about it.
There is no area where a VFD and IR receiver could be installed (a design issue) and this is what I feel is lacking to make this a true class beating HTPC case out of 10 Id give it 7.5.
With regards to a powerbuy the shipping costs are huge by air, by sea is probably the only option but delivery would be 4 to 5 weeks, will post shortly with regards to whether a powerbuy is gonna be feasible or not.
Rob