Introduction

         

Let me tell you, the first thing I noticed about this case is the paint job. It is really quite good. It has a high gloss finish which looks really nice, until you smudge it all up as you'll see throughout this review. If you touch the paint at all it leaves marks all over it, so you're gonna have to maintain it a little bit with some Windex. Also, the front bezel is made of 1/3" cast acrylic plexiglass, which is also very nice looking. Again, this too smudges quite severely, but if you are going to clean acrylic don't use any type of ammonia based cleaner like Windex because it will fog up the clear plastic, and that looks bad. But the case itself is very nice looking, very professionally done. You can see in the third picture how shiny the case is, as my camera flash reflected right off the side.

I did find one flaw in the paint job, and that was a dent on the back of the case, as you can see in the next picture. I don't know if this happened during shipping or manufacturing, but it is kind of ugly, but then again I'm sure this is just a fluke and most if not all of the other cases will be just fine. Plus, its on the back where nobody is going to see it anyway, but I thought I would point it out anyway. Also, I apologize about the bad picture, I just got this digital camera and I'm still figuring out how the focus and stuff works so I can take better pics.

What I really like about this case, along with the paint job, is the chrome buttons on the front. They really go well with the clear plexiglass and the black finish, so on aesthetics alone this case is a 10. Lets check out some of the more functional features:

         

Here we see the front headers for USB, FireWire, and audio I/O. They are neatly nestled in the case, and are quite attractive. The little printed circuit board in the second picture is what the cord in the 3rd picture connects to. It's a nice tidy package, with not too many loose wires to fiddle around with. The cable is wrapped around a magnet, which I assume is to get rid of any kind of interference and make the signal clearer, but I could be wrong on that one.

Okay, lets get inside this baby and install some components and see how she holds up.

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Inside the case >>