SilverStone TechnologyHome Theater Computer Case with Aluminum Front Panel for E-ATX/ATX/Micro-ATX Motherboards GD08B

First I'll start by saying that I have as of this review built 6 HTPCs using this case in the last 4 months. I originally bought this to house my HTPC after I decided I no longer wanted a desktop tower sitting next to my entertainment center. With that as a limitation on my size choices I searched for weeks and kept coming across this case, but the price tag honestly scared me, since my last experience with a specifically designed case for an HTPC was less than stellar. But after comparing it to others, I kept coming back to it and eventually decided it would fit what I needed.**UPDATE: Since there seems to be an issue with people knowing the exact dimensions of this case they are: 440mm(W) x 175mm(H) x 425mm(D)or in inches: 17.3in(W) x 6.8in(H) x 16.7in(D)**UPDATE: Since My original Review I have now built 8 HTPCs with this case and none have had any issues.**UPDATE: Also something I forgot to mention, this case IS RACK MOUNTABLE... It has rack mounting points on the sides...So now on to the actual review:Pros:Space, lots and lots of space.Positive pressure design with filters.Very nice look, the case looks and acts well built.Aesthetics, it looks better than my receiver and other components, easily the best looking component in my home theater.Allows for full size components.Room for more hard drives than you could need.Removable Drive Cage with handles.Room for 10 Internal Hard Drives (Without adapters) (8) 3.5 Inch Bays (7 to the right of the 5.25 bays, 1 to the left) plus (2) 2.5 mounts above the 5.25 inch bays.Cons:(for what I want this is a con, but not for most people) 2 80mm fan mounts on the back above i/o panel, good for exhaust fans, but no standard liquid cooling solutions fit on an 80mm mounting point as of this review.The drive door triggers can be a pain to align to your dvd/blu-ray drive causing the door to not open when the button is pressed or to open/close constantly (but with some adjusting this is sorted out)Honestly this case looks more like a Home Theater component as opposed to a PC. I get people asking fairly often where my computer is, (since everything we watch runs through it) When I point it out they are truly surprised. I have built 5 more HTPCs using this case thanks to people seeing mine and loving the look. With these I have used nothing but full size components, which is great since airflow and dimension restrictions are not really a problem (there are some to be aware of but I'll cover those later)The positive airflow keeps the dust out, I clean my filters out about 1 time per month with a dog and 2 cats in the house, but I haven't had any real dust in the case, it gets picked up by the filters, in 4 months no dust issues.I'm extremely pleased with this case and I will continue to use it if people want me to build them a Home Theater PC...It is made of quality steel, even empty with the cover and drive cage out it does not bend or twist. (this is a big issue with many HTPC cases)Some things you do need to watch for are Video card height and length, the case only has 140mm of height above the motherboard, so be sure you aren't using an extra tall video card, also if you plan to fill up your hard drive case with drives pay attention to the length, clearance gets tight with hard drives mounted in the bays at about 9 inches... although with 8 places to mount 3.5 inch drives and 2 2.5 bays along with the 2 5.25 bays you have tons of ways to avoid interference with your video card.Pay attention if you are using a tall CPU cooler, the max height of the cooler is 140MM, also going with a extra wide one might make cable routing difficult for your disc drives.The removable drive cage is a lifesaver when it comes to mounting your drives, it is simple to pull out and put back thanks to the handles (this is important since 5 drives plus blu-ray and an SSD could be difficult to situate without the handles.Ok, now I've gushed about the case lets look at the short list of cons I had... First the 2 80MM fan mounts above the I/O panel are useful for fans, but I really wanted to do a liquid cooling solution, but none of the standard sealed models utilize 80MM mounts, so I compromised and just put some fans in, for most people this is a good thing to have 2 additional fan locations, but I really wanted to do liquid cooling...The 2 drive doors have triggers that sit against the open/close buttons on your drives. These can be a little tricky to align, I had this issue on my Asus Blu-ray but it was much simpler with a Sony one.So to wrap up, This could very well be the case you're looking for. If you want a case to fit in just about any home theater setting this works perfectly. It is worth the price and I would recommend it to almost anyone. The only thing it doesn't have that some might want is an LCD screen, but for me, it's a great fit.These cases are very versatile, I have built one with an M-Atx board and only a small SSD (to serve network media) many in between and even one with an E-Atx board with 32.5TB of storage (8 4GB Drives), 2 blu-rays etc...Components in my new Personal Build: 7/05/2013Case: Silverstone Tek GD-08SSD of OS/Programs: SAMSUNG 840 256GB 2.5 SATA IIIPower Supply: Corsair AX760i (Fully Modular)Motherboard: AsRock z87 Fatal1ty ProfessionalCPU: Intel 4th Generation Haswell Core i7 4770KMemory: Crucial Ballistix Very Low Profile DDR3, 4x8GB (32GB total)Optical Drive: LG Blu-Ray Reader/DVD WriterVideo Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 650-Ti SSC 1GBCPU Cooler: Arctic Freezer Pro Rev 2Storage Drives: 4 Western Digital Red 3TB Drives80mm Fans: 2 Fractal Silent Series120MM Fan: 1 Zalmann Ultra Quiet (This only came with Rubber mounts, luckily I had some extra fan screws)(See customer images for why this was important)Components in my Old personal Build:Silverstone Tek GD-08 CaseASUS P8Z77-V Pro Intel Z77 4DIMM ATX2400Corsair Enthusiast Series TX850 V2 850W 80+ BronzeSAMSUNG 840 250GB 2.5 SATA IIIIntel Core i7-3770K 3.50 GHz LGA1155Kingston XMP 16GB 1866MHz DDR3 CL9 (Kit of 4) XMPBlu-ray Optical Drive4 Western Digital Red 3 TB NAS Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, SATA IIIARCTIC Freezer 7 Pro Rev. 2, CPU Cooler - Intel & AMD, Multi-Directional Mount, 92mm PWM FanEVGA GeForce GTX 650 1024MB GDDR5 DVI mHDMI Graphics CardEverything fit without an issue, and my CPU temp has never reached above 50 Degrees Celsius. I can't say enough about this case...

Ordered this product so that I could finally put my Media PC into the Entertainment Center where it belonged. Assembly was very easy, the box is small by PC tower standards (it's designed to fit in an entertainment center) but there was still plenty of room to work. It wasn't like putting together a Mini ITX setup or anything like that. I used a full ATX Motherboard with a full sized 600W Power Supply.. there was no problem fitting everything in.The one and only issue I have are the included fans.. man are they cheap. The wires coming off the fans are not braided like most good fans, they're just 4 long loose wires going into the motherboard plug. They sit right next to where your CPU goes and it's very difficult to keep the wires out of the CPU Cooler. In my case, my closest fan header was just opposite the CPU and despite my best efforts, the cooler sucked in the wires and I had to cut them to free the cooler destroying the fan. The other intake fan, only worked if I pushed it with my finger once I started the computer. I pulled both of them and replaced them with better quality fans and all is well. The single exhaust fan seemed to work fine and it's currently still in the box (for now.)Fans aside, the build quality is beyond solid. Mounting of drives was easy enough, though space is limited, especially if you have an Optical Drive. You can mount 2 hard drives or 1 HD and one Optical Drive before you're going to have to get creative. Again, this is to be expected though as the emphasis is on having a small footprint.. there are obviously going to be trade offs with a full sized case. All in all though, the build is complete, it looks good and it's cool and quiet. I would recommend the product, but before you order it's probably best to make sure you have 2 or 3 extra 120MM fans handy. I wouldn't trust the bundled onces, they're junk. I really like everything else though, I am very happy with how the build came out.