Fractal Design Core 1000 USB 3.0 Cases FD-CA-CORE-1000-USB3-BL

This is a very attractive little case and it makes great use of the little space it takes up. Inside you have space for three 2.5" drives or two 3.5" drives and two 5.25" drives. The lower 5.25" bay has an adapter for both 3.5" drives and 2.5" drives. If you only have 3.5" drives, the core 1000 will support three of them straight out of the box. Installation of a micro atx motherboard is a tight squeeze, but your motherboard will not be damaged in the process. Airflow can go from "ok" to "very good" with some creativity and a few zip ties. The included 120mm fan isn't phenomenal but it gets the job done. I recommend you upgrade it to one of fractal design's 120mm venturi high airflow fans, along with another of the same fan on the left side panel to feed your graphics card(s). Installing a 92mm fan in the back of the case is definitely something I recommend, just so your PSU doesn't have to do all of the work. Something else that's really nice is that it includes a little tab with a loop so you can put a lock on your case. On the back of the case to the right of the I/O cutout, there's a knockout for a serial port header cable. There's even a 3.5" trim piece for one of the 5.25" bays, in case you have a 3.5" card reader or floppy drive that you would like to install.As you may have heard, fractal design has crazy good customer service. My power button stopped working so I contacted fractal design and had a new one by the end of the week.

This case is simply perfect for a build budget of $500-$600. Nice, small, and compact. The front has nice mesh filtering for keeping out dust. It has a slot for a 120mm fan in the back and another one on the side for a 92mm fan, however just the front fan alone will do you fine.The only real negative thing of this case is the poor cable management, but I'm not going to count that because that's a problem with 90% of PC cases.

First off, I do not show up as having purchased this case as the ones I purchased from Amazon are the older variant that is USB2 only. The new version has USB 3 and was not available on Amazon when I got mine, so they were purchased at that Egg store... Anyway, I have about 12 of the older USB 2 version and 18 or so of the this version.Anyway, I have used both versions of this case now, I built about 30 new machines for my office using this case and overall I'm very happy with this case. There are some minor issues and it is by no means perfect, but for the money I've never been so happy with a budget case. I used standard ATX motherboards, and standard CPU coolers for i5 processors. There is room for bigger CPU coolers and the like wither reason, and cooling has been great for our normal uses. Case is quiet, looks good in the office and has been easy to build when working on getting them done too.I like the removable hard drive tray on the side, it is unusual but works very well. I used all SSD drives and they mounted just fine, the overall build went great with no issues for room in my basic builds.Negatives - here is a short list of what I found or noticed, remember I went through 30 or so of these cases so these were found among all of them, not just a single case!I found three cases missing the power button on the side of the front. The button itself was there and worked, the cover was missing. I found one loose in the box, the other two were totally missing.Two of them had a bad connector for the audio, not the HD one the secondary AC97 port. One was totally gone, another had two wires loose out of the connector. Not and issue for me as I did not use AC97 jack anyway, all other case ports were fine for all connections.The case is light which is good, on the bottom the metal is thin and can "pop" when set down on it's feet. Not a big deal and I like it light but be aware this may well happen or at least be possible. I'd say half of mine had this happen, I do not really consider it an issue but thought I'd mention it for others.Only other issue is the fan on the front is three pin only, it works fine on a four pin connector but it will run at a set speed only. It is quiet, so no issue there but I'd love control over it on the MB side. The only real negative is you'd better have canned air handy as it will collect dust up front for sure! Means the filter is working which is good though.Lastly three or four of these had a motherboard standoff that was tough to install, the standoff was fine but the hole in the MB tray was not quite right. I made them all work, but a few were really tough.In the end I am still super happy with the money spent, for the quality received. I've worked on plenty of computer cases and had much worse problems that what I mentioned above. I don't think I ever cut myself when working in this case which is a plus, I used to bleed every time I'd work in an inexpensive case! I would use this case for a computer at my home, and that says a lot as I'm usually a case snob for my home machines. There are better out there for sure, but you will spend more!EDIT - I just purchased three more of these cases, and this time Amazon had them cheaper than the other store where I purchased them before. Anyway, I'm still very pleased with these cases, pleased enough that I just purchased a few more so I can get machines built for more new employees.I have had no failures of any kind with the cases so far, fans are working and buttons or anything gone bad. I had one USB port on the side quit, but when you kick the thumb drive sideways in the port as the employee did, that is sure not the cases fault!

LOVE Fractal Design cases. We build a lot of computers, and have gone through 100+ of these gems. On the rare occasion that there is any sort of issue with the case, FD support has been absolutely amazing and overnighted parts, keeping our downtime to a minimum.Out of the 100+ cases we've used we have only had an issue with 1 of them. Folks, that ain't bad!My only complaint, and it is a minor one, is that the front panel audio/USB connectors are located on the side of the case, not the actual front. This has caused a couple of challenges in getting them setup in tight spots.Word of caution - when having them shipped and if you are in the Dallas area do NOT use UPS to ship. UPS has destroyed 10+ of these cases in shipment. They arrived looking like someone had lined a dance-floor at a bunny hop with the boxes and groups of wild people jumped up and down on them. We have found that FedEx is the choice shipper in the area and can deliver these without damaging them.FD has since come out with the Core 1100 case at the same price point, and it is beautiful. They moved the front panel audio/USB connections from the side to the front on the new design.