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I know most people here are talking about toaster sized mini-ATX cases, but I've always been partial to the practicality (from a system tinkering point of view) of mid-tower cases.

For people in that demographic, I'd put my vote on the Antec Sonata. While it's not exactly silent, it's quieter than most; and it does look pretty slick with its high gloss black finish. Internally, it's one of the nicest cases I've ever had the pleasure of working on.

Of particular note is the the hard drive positioning and easy removal of all storage components (clips and rails). It also comes with a high quality 380W power supply (w/ SATA connectors), extra internal 6" fan, and front-panel-access for audio, USB and firewire.

Not too shabby for ~$120 CND.

A PC case of similar size has maybe four external drive bays and five hard drive bays, and five PCI slots plus an AGP slot.

A PC case with similar expandability, like the Antec Aria, is much smaller. (Though the Aria doesn't have two CPUs and can't hold 8 sticks of memory.)

While the insides of most PC cases may not look neat and tidy, it's child's play to buy or build a quiet, powerful PC that never overheats no matter what the load. So while PC cases may not (in general) have air channels, I'd say they work as well as they need to (though Intel apparently disagrees, since the BTX form factor is coming and is supposed to be designed for airflow).

I don't think you could reasonably expect a mainstream manufacturer to give up the expandability for an academic increase in cooling efficiency, although Shuttle has clearly demonstrated that at least some people are willing to give up expandibility for a slick form factor.

The G5's are beautiful though; I wouldn't mind owning one.

"Why didn't someone think of this sooner?"

THEY DID. There have been products out there that do this for ages. Off the top of my head, the Antec Notebook Cooler which has built in fans to handle heat, which means the laptop truely does run significantly cooler. There are a slew of similar products that have been on the market for ages.

Perhaps Slashdot's next post should be about a new invention by a small unknown company that they call a "rodent", that can be used to move a cursor around the screen! Except, there are no buttons on it, so you have to use your keyboard to click. Slashdot is just posting about an inferior version of an idea that has been in production for a while. This is not news.

When I built my latest desktop box, I went for a Antec Sonata which is MUCH quieter than my old system. In fact, even with it sitting on my desk next to my monitors, I hardly hear it - just a little drive whine.

Unfortunately my house is in the middle of major renovation, so my office is temporarily located in the basement. Now I have all the noise from the water heater (power vent) and boiler. My new office design has the systems in a back-open cubbie under the desk with a smoked-glass door (kinda like a stereo cabinet.) That should all but eliminate the remaining noise. It's too bad most periphereals have such short cables.

My noisy servers are in another basement room - one with 4' thick granite walls so it stays nice and cool year round (and a higher humidity level for less static.) I don't hear them at all :-)

Antec Sonata case.

I take it the person who asked the question wants to run on server boards, which basically excludes any of the cute little shoebox cases available. They can also be rather large, which excludes many desktop mid-tower cases as well. Most 1U cases I've seen are intended strictly for datacenter use and aren't built with acoustical ergonomics in mind--They usually run several 40mm 7000RPM fans and generate a lot of noise.

I usually just go to Antec for enclosures, but in this case it might just be wiser to have your boss order a few extra nodes that you can take home. Modern Xeon and Opteron systems tend to get very, very hot in 1U enclosures and require wind tunneling for more efficient cooling and require enormous amounts of power from PSUs that cost several hundred dollars in 1U form factor.

Intel is quieter?

You claim to know more about hardware than "Tom's" and you comment on a CPU/platform being quieter?

Go buy yourself an Antec Sonata computer case with an AMD CPU in it and tell me how loud it is.

Loudness is a feature of fans, airflow and vibration, not a CPU.

If what you're trying to insinuate is that AMD chips run hotter and therefore need better cooling, that may or may not be true at a given performance-point, but say so or you come off being to inexact to be able to back up your statements.

While you're at it, pick up one of their copper-based CPU Coolers and maybe their heat-sensitive SmartCool case fans.

Intel is quieter?

You claim to know more about hardware than "Tom's" and you comment on a CPU/platform being quieter?

Go buy yourself an Antec Sonata computer case with an AMD CPU in it and tell me how loud it is.

Loudness is a feature of fans, airflow and vibration, not a CPU.

If what you're trying to insinuate is that AMD chips run hotter and therefore need better cooling, that may or may not be true at a given performance-point, but say so or you come off being to inexact to be able to back up your statements.

While you're at it, pick up one of their copper-based CPU Coolers and maybe their heat-sensitive SmartCool case fans.

Intel is quieter?

You claim to know more about hardware than "Tom's" and you comment on a CPU/platform being quieter?

Go buy yourself an Antec Sonata computer case with an AMD CPU in it and tell me how loud it is.

Loudness is a feature of fans, airflow and vibration, not a CPU.

If what you're trying to insinuate is that AMD chips run hotter and therefore need better cooling, that may or may not be true at a given performance-point, but say so or you come off being to inexact to be able to back up your statements.

While you're at it, pick up one of their copper-based CPU Coolers and maybe their heat-sensitive SmartCool case fans.

Just plain bad design. Get an Antec Overture instead - far more expandable.

ExtremeTech has a good recent article on building your own home theater PC (basically, a high end PC-based PVR). Nice configuration they got there. I'm thinking of doing something similar, but with the Antec Overture case.

...in three easy steps.

1. Antec Performance One P160 case.
2. Nexus PSU, fans and CPU heatsink and fan.
3. Samsung SpinPoint series of HDDs.

Zalman's products aren't bad but, IMHO, Nexus' are superior.

Oh, and either ditch the jet engine that masquerades as a graphics card with something quieter or replace its fan too.

I don't have a rack yet. Right now the case is sitting on its side out in my laundry room next to the dryer, which is also where the patch panel for all of the Cat5 jacks in the house terminate and where the DSL box, NAT/firewall, hub, etc. live. I'd kind of like to put all of it in a rack, and there's just enough space there for one. I'd been thinking of building a 24U rack by buying a full-height one at Fry's, then sawing each rail in half and using one half for the front and one for the back. But the rackframe.com link someone posted earlier looks pretty tempting. Right now all of this is waiting on getting the house re-plumbed so I can put up drywall in that room first.

Hello. I was lucky enough to come upon a used rack that a company was throwing away. I am now in the process of building a rackmount server. By far, the hardest part was finding a case that was inexpensive and had enough hard drive bays for my needs. After much searching, I finally found the Antec line of rackmount cases:

http://www.antec-inc.com/us/pro_rackmounts.html

I think these are fairly new, because when I first started looking, no one had stock. I got my 4U22ATX400 off of Newegg.com and I love it. It is really heavy duty and sturdy. Plus, it has drive bays up the wazzo. Finally, despite its low price ($188), it has the features of a much more expensive case.

Insightful? How so?

I so happen to have one of "those god awful 'mini' 'cube' PCs" and it's fantastic, thank you very much. I used to be a vocal opponent of those things because they were kludgy and underperformant, but I got myself one of them "mailboxes" some time ago and it's been great. I had the mother of all great big cases, the Antec 1080, which I loved (and still do, for its purpose it's the best case out there), but I realised that for normal PC operation, something that weighs 35 kilos and has eight fans is overkill.

When it was time to upgrade, I was simply going to get the same only smaller, but a friend sold me into getting one of "those god awful 'mini' 'cube' PCs" and I must say, it's one of the best computing choices I've made.

With a combo drive it can do everything a regular PC can, without significantly more noise/heat, while being smaller, lighter, and looking damn cool in black. I already upgraded the system twice with no worries, and as the time draws near to update the system again, I'm thinking about going 64-bit, but whatever I do you can bet it's going to come in a tiny black box.

Insightful? How so?

I so happen to have one of "those god awful 'mini' 'cube' PCs" and it's fantastic, thank you very much. I used to be a vocal opponent of those things because they were kludgy and underperformant, but I got myself one of them "mailboxes" some time ago and it's been great. I had the mother of all great big cases, the Antec 1080, which I loved (and still do, for its purpose it's the best case out there), but I realised that for normal PC operation, something that weighs 35 kilos and has eight fans is overkill.

When it was time to upgrade, I was simply going to get the same only smaller, but a friend sold me into getting one of "those god awful 'mini' 'cube' PCs" and I must say, it's one of the best computing choices I've made.

With a combo drive it can do everything a regular PC can, without significantly more noise/heat, while being smaller, lighter, and looking damn cool in black. I already upgraded the system twice with no worries, and as the time draws near to update the system again, I'm thinking about going 64-bit, but whatever I do you can bet it's going to come in a tiny black box.

Look here and here.

What I'm looking for is affordable cheap, capacity and redundancy; RAID 1+0 (striping the mirrors) and 0+1 (mirroring the stripes) achieve this. I believe the minimal configuration for such a set up involves four drives for concurrent writes as well as reads (maybe even 4x the reading speed and 2x the writing speed as with a single drive?). This would also be sort of cheaper, since you can get two of last year's drives instead of just one of this year's higher-capacity models and still come out with the same space (and save some cash).

On that note, two questions:

1. Can anyone recommend an effective cooling enclosure for these things? Closest I've found are the Antec Plus660AMG and Plus1080AMG and Antec Sonata cases. These have fans blowing right in front of the internal hard drive cage. They're not as expensive as dedicated external drive cages, but doesn't anyone sell bare drive cages like the ones you find in a basic $20 case?? One could set a desk fan in front of them.

2. What is the effective difference between RAID 0+1 and 1+0? Why do more people recommend 1+0 instead of 0+1? (perhaps the different configurations have different tradeoffs in total post-failure speed or further redundancy?)

Roey Katz

What I'm looking for is affordable cheap, capacity and redundancy; RAID 1+0 (striping the mirrors) and 0+1 (mirroring the stripes) achieve this. I believe the minimal configuration for such a set up involves four drives for concurrent writes as well as reads (maybe even 4x the reading speed and 2x the writing speed as with a single drive?). This would also be sort of cheaper, since you can get two of last year's drives instead of just one of this year's higher-capacity models and still come out with the same space (and save some cash).

On that note, two questions:

1. Can anyone recommend an effective cooling enclosure for these things? Closest I've found are the Antec Plus660AMG and Plus1080AMG and Antec Sonata cases. These have fans blowing right in front of the internal hard drive cage. They're not as expensive as dedicated external drive cages, but doesn't anyone sell bare drive cages like the ones you find in a basic $20 case?? One could set a desk fan in front of them.

2. What is the effective difference between RAID 0+1 and 1+0? Why do more people recommend 1+0 instead of 0+1? (perhaps the different configurations have different tradeoffs in total post-failure speed or further redundancy?)

Roey Katz

To be honest, if some manufacturer were to make a case that blended in with the rest of my office I'd be first in line to buy it.

Take a look at the Antec Sonata. No, it's not woodgrain, but the high gloss "piano" black is magnitudes more classy than plain beige or gamer-green. It's also damned quiet and well designed inside.

Whatever case you get, you want to get something suited to your needs and those of your hardware. If you've got a hot machine, you want to make sure you get a case with plenty of good airflow over the areas that get hot -- and it's no good if it keeps your motherboard cool if it's letting your HD's cook because they're in deadzones without even enough space for convection cooling.

Cheaper cases usually come with cheapo PSU's with poor specifications and build quality, which can easily lead to annoying (and even painful) setup, instability, and annoying vibrations you can't get rid of.

I paid 70 UKP for my case -- an Antex SLK3700 (review), based on a cheaper OEM case. It has good construction (aside from the plasticy facade), a beefy high quality PSU, and excellent airflow, especially over the generous number of drive bays (both requirements for me.. I lub my storage!).

I *could* have spent 20 UKP on a cheapo case, but it would have come with a nasty 5-quid PSU which might not last six months (hopefully not taking my hardware with it, assuming it's powerful enough to run it at all), no removable drive bays, poor stamped fan-bays which block 90% of airflow, no dust-guards, and no nice shiny finish.

Plus, if I need a decent case, I *know* I can just get another SLK3700 - I don't need to hunt through a load of generic OEM cases which will have changed by next week just to find something near what I want every time.

That's not to say I don't buy cheaper cases for people with modest requirements, but computer weenies like us typically appreciate a bit of quality -- it's just like getting a 90 UKP Epox motherboard instead of a 35 UKP PC Chips one; they both do pretty much the same job, but I know which I'd prefer to work with. Cases just have the benefit of not being *quite* so vital.

This guy's modded a monitor, the v2, (i know, uhg flash, but some of the stuff is pretty cool) Also i'd think the Mac CRTs we have at school, came with the G4s, completly transparent would be perfect to put some lights inside. Also i got these and this(also avalible at thinkgeek). Got both in blue and arranged them like in the pictures, they're quite bright and light up my desk pretty well. I had to lengthen the cable on one of the small ones to get it to the other side of the monitor, i attached the control boxes(off-sound reactive-on, and sensitivity) tot he back of my speakers. I got a usb card for something like $5 and wired the ports into the switchbox i made in my empty 3.5" bay. 4 switches with blue LEDs, one controls the case fan, one controls this inside the front of my case. Its one of those radioshack Compaqs with the changable transluscent front panels, it lights up pretty well. The other two switches control the monitor lights. Its a pretty simple but uniqe mod, no window, no cold cathodes. Inside though, round cables for improved airflow and the case fan is a blue led fan and it shines out the vents pretty well. E-mail me if you want pictures.

This guy's modded a monitor, the v2, (i know, uhg flash, but some of the stuff is pretty cool) Also i'd think the Mac CRTs we have at school, came with the G4s, completly transparent would be perfect to put some lights inside. Also i got these and this(also avalible at thinkgeek). Got both in blue and arranged them like in the pictures, they're quite bright and light up my desk pretty well. I had to lengthen the cable on one of the small ones to get it to the other side of the monitor, i attached the control boxes(off-sound reactive-on, and sensitivity) tot he back of my speakers. I got a usb card for something like $5 and wired the ports into the switchbox i made in my empty 3.5" bay. 4 switches with blue LEDs, one controls the case fan, one controls this inside the front of my case. Its one of those radioshack Compaqs with the changable transluscent front panels, it lights up pretty well. The other two switches control the monitor lights. Its a pretty simple but uniqe mod, no window, no cold cathodes. Inside though, round cables for improved airflow and the case fan is a blue led fan and it shines out the vents pretty well. E-mail me if you want pictures.

I built a system using that case, about a month ago. It is so, so quiet. If I put my head halfway between the Sonata system and my regular desktop (a Dell Latitude notebook), they produce about the same noise level. I'm talking quiet here.

Though the idea of using a material that burns when exposed to a camera flash, for storage, is a little unnerving... Anyone know how they plan to address that and other problems/inherent properties of nanotubes?

No more of your fancy windows in computer cases.

Maybe Antec does not consider air filters to be an important feature, but the SLK3700AMB does have a washable air filter. It's hidden in the mechanical drawing and the manual on page 4.

I like this case but the power supply and the 120mm fan both blow resulting in negative pressure.

Maybe Antec does not consider air filters to be an important feature, but the SLK3700AMB does have a washable air filter. It's hidden in the mechanical drawing and the manual on page 4.

I like this case but the power supply and the 120mm fan both blow resulting in negative pressure.

Maybe Antec does not consider air filters to be an important feature, but the SLK3700AMB does have a washable air filter. It's hidden in the mechanical drawing and the manual on page 4.

I like this case but the power supply and the 120mm fan both blow resulting in negative pressure.

The Antec SX1040BII definitely has a filter for the intake fans, as indicated in the link and because I have one. It doesn't meet your requirements because it has 4x80mm fans, not 2x120mm. The one I got has a good Antec Truepower 400W power supply. It was $80 at CompUSA (I needed a case fast).

I would suspect that since there is not explicit mention of a filter on Antec's page for the SLK3700AMB that it doesn't have a filter.

You may want to head over to the Case and Cooling Fetish forum at Ars Technica and search for filter-related posts. Some members there know their stuff. The two tips I gleaned were:

• Have positive pressure in the case, i.e., more suck than blow. Otherwise, air will be sucked in through the cracks in the case, not the filters.
• Used fabric softener sheets make good filters. Others in the forum have found cheap filter material at Home Depot.

The Antec SX1040BII definitely has a filter for the intake fans, as indicated in the link and because I have one. It doesn't meet your requirements because it has 4x80mm fans, not 2x120mm. The one I got has a good Antec Truepower 400W power supply. It was $80 at CompUSA (I needed a case fast).

I would suspect that since there is not explicit mention of a filter on Antec's page for the SLK3700AMB that it doesn't have a filter.

You may want to head over to the Case and Cooling Fetish forum at Ars Technica and search for filter-related posts. Some members there know their stuff. The two tips I gleaned were:

• Have positive pressure in the case, i.e., more suck than blow. Otherwise, air will be sucked in through the cracks in the case, not the filters.
• Used fabric softener sheets make good filters. Others in the forum have found cheap filter material at Home Depot.

I agree. I have my Antec SLK3700AMB, the case in question, mounted on top of a sturdy work boot box just so it doesn't vacuum my rug for me. I love this case and it has all your requirements, including a washable air filter. Simplely looking on Antec's website at the drawing or manual will tell you that, even if it just window screening.

I usually clean the filter every 2 or 3 weeks and blow out the fans every 2 months. I once cleaned out the vaccum in front of my computer when it was on. Good thing for the filter because that big 120mm fan would of pulled in all the dust. Instead the filter caught all the dust and it looked like a dryer filter full of lint.

Of course vacuuming the basement would help cut down on the dust just a litle bit.

I agree. I have my Antec SLK3700AMB, the case in question, mounted on top of a sturdy work boot box just so it doesn't vacuum my rug for me. I love this case and it has all your requirements, including a washable air filter. Simplely looking on Antec's website at the drawing or manual will tell you that, even if it just window screening.

I usually clean the filter every 2 or 3 weeks and blow out the fans every 2 months. I once cleaned out the vaccum in front of my computer when it was on. Good thing for the filter because that big 120mm fan would of pulled in all the dust. Instead the filter caught all the dust and it looked like a dryer filter full of lint.

Of course vacuuming the basement would help cut down on the dust just a litle bit.

I agree. I have my Antec SLK3700AMB, the case in question, mounted on top of a sturdy work boot box just so it doesn't vacuum my rug for me. I love this case and it has all your requirements, including a washable air filter. Simplely looking on Antec's website at the drawing or manual will tell you that, even if it just window screening.

I usually clean the filter every 2 or 3 weeks and blow out the fans every 2 months. I once cleaned out the vaccum in front of my computer when it was on. Good thing for the filter because that big 120mm fan would of pulled in all the dust. Instead the filter caught all the dust and it looked like a dryer filter full of lint.

Of course vacuuming the basement would help cut down on the dust just a litle bit.

Well, it's black. That counts for something. I've actually never seen a NeXT cube up close.

I know it's probably considered incredibly lame by Slashdot standards, butI like black Antec cases. They are huge, well-designed, include lots of room for expansion, and are rated for dual Xeons (or dual Athlon MPs, if you swing that way). That's some wicked stuff. Well, to someone who has no life, at least.

Whooooops.... Now we know I'm not a web developer. That was supposed to read: I think the closest you'll get is an Antec. Please, prove me wrong somebody. I hate my PC's case. ... Perhaps I should use the "Preview" button every once in a while. Mod down to taste. :)

I think the closest you'll get is an . I've looked for this too. Please, prove me wrong somebody. I hate my PC's case.

Speaking of IBM drives... I thought my UltraStar drive (DDYS-T18350N) was running fine (over a year old)... however bad sectors just appeared on it suddenly and now it has been RMA'd.

I never had *any* problem with it, and suddenly this pops up. Cooling isn't an issue, my Antec case has a nice fan blowing right over it. This is probably the first time I've ever had a decent drive fail on me, excluding ancient crap IDE's and a Cheetah that came DOA (or at least on it's way there). Just goes to show me you can never be too careful about backing up! Good thing I was able to extract all my data without a hitch.

Speaking of IBM drives... I thought my UltraStar drive (DDYS-T18350N) was running fine (over a year old)... however bad sectors just appeared on it suddenly and now it has been RMA'd.

I never had *any* problem with it, and suddenly this pops up. Cooling isn't an issue, my Antec case has a nice fan blowing right over it. This is probably the first time I've ever had a decent drive fail on me, excluding ancient crap IDE's and a Cheetah that came DOA (or at least on it's way there). Just goes to show me you can never be too careful about backing up! Good thing I was able to extract all my data without a hitch.

Actually, I was curious, if you're using a lot of Antec supplies could you tell me what the practical difference, if any, is between Antec's True power supply line and their Sl line? Is it just that the tolerances on the voltages are a little tighter?

The True Power line actually has dedicated circuitry for 3.3, 5, and 12V's. There's some other differences too:
http://www.antec-inc.com/pdf/truepower_inclusion.p df

I also recently purchased an antec power supply.

I purchased the SL350 power supply, from their solution series.

For a little less money than the True series, it has dual temperature sensitive fans, with plenty of power for a fully loaded system, yet runs quietly.

I payed about $50 for it from googlegear, and I have been very impressed with the noise/heat/performance.

I recently bought a 430-watt Antec power supply, and it is a beast. It has two temperature-sensitive fans, gold plated connectors, and weighs about four or five times more than the one it was replacing. It was well worth the money, especially given the system it powers -- two CPUs, a GeForce 4 Ti, two optical drives, and a handful of modern hard disks.

On the plus side, my system is more stable, runs cooler, and is quieter than it was before. I greatly favor my premium power supply over the one that came with my case, and I strongly recommend anyone with a downed PSU to pay the extra dollar.

.. and hook up the video card.

I have a 1800 Althon system with the GeForce 4200 card that runs like a top with XP.

Although Intel would have you believe that the P4 is what makes the net "come alive", it's really your graphics card and internet connection.

As a previous poster stated, get a good case from newegg.com

I recently built my system, spending ~700 bucks and had no problems with any of the parts I purchased from them. As always, check the guides at tom's hardware, sharkyextreme, anandtech.com

Good luck and remmeber not to run on the carpet before you build it together. Personally, I never had a problem with static electricity except for one time I touched the bottom of HD and fried it. Good thing it was a work computer though :-P

Lockable case like a antec 1030, best non-rackable case I've ever used.

Don't skimp on the power supply, guys. Get an Antec or one from PC Power & Cooling. Sure they're expensive, but not as expensive as rebuilding your burnt-out house.

Chip H.

Actually most decent fans have an RPM sensor(third wire) Although most motherboards made withing the last 3 years support RPM (along with CPU and System Temp) monitoring very few power supplies. The only one I know of is Antec But these powersupplies vary fan speed according to temp in order to control noise. I have no idea if the have any safety shutdown features. To be honest, power supplies/fans fail all the time, I mean all the time, I have never seen a fire result. Rarely powersupply take other components with them, but most the time only the PSU fails.

My Kayak has fan monitoring and failsafe settings for all the fans but the PSU

I love my Antec Case.

I can open it up, and change fans with no screws. The drive cages and external drive rails are awesome.

My friend and I decided to build new PCs at the same time to save cash on shipping etc. We both purchased Antec 1240 towers (If you've never seen them, these things are huge. The top of my machine has maybe a half inch of clearence with the bottom of my desk, and I have a rather tall desk.). The only dissapointment was that these cases weren't availible in black (through our supplier anyway). Anyway, my friend came up with a sweet idea for a case mod. First of all, we paint the cases black. The case is completely modular so we can remove everything and paint it seperately (except the top part, which involves removal of pop rivets). Then on one side, we dremel out a trapezoid (actually, we should do this before painting..). Then we take a sheet of non-yellowing Lucite, cut a trapezoid a bit larger on all sides then the one on the case. We stencil on a design, fill in some spaces with black paint, and mount it on the side, painted side facing inward, with 1/4 inch bolts with polished heads (for that industrial look). To complete the mod, we'll (eventually) purchase lights to mount in the top of the case. My friend's plan is to stencil a biohazard logo on the Lucite, black out the parts that are normally red on the logo, allowing yellow light to shine through the logo itself. Also, the light should be visible around the edges of the Lucite.

We went to the local Home Hardware a few weeks ago and already purchased some water-based (to avoid the chance of melting the plastic bezel because the cases are 300$CDN a piece) gloss black paint, a 2 foot x 4 foot sheet of Lucite, 16 polished 1/4 inch bolts, 16 1/4 inch nuts and 2 paint brushes. This should be enough to do the 2 Antecs as well as the case of my old Linux machine (as a test).

Total cost: 50$ canadian total, so 25$ each (not including the lighting of course). And we should have more then enough Lucite left over to do at least a few more cases. So with a little luck, this might just pay for itself. We intend to do this sometime next month when it's dry enough out for the paint to dry quickly. These wicked cases just got a little more wicked.

For those of you too lazy to go to Google, here's a link to the Antec cases page. There's also a mixed review here, with some better pictures. In agreement with the article, 2/3 of their product lines come in either black or grey. I actually think the grey looks better, though - the black ones look too much like the new Dells for me.

Black cases have been available for years from such companies as Antec, Siliconrax, and others for years. How is this different?

There are also numerous industrial PC companies that are happy to provide cases in whatever color the buyer chooses. I guess I'm just having trouble seeing why this piece is newsworthy...?

The case came with a stick-on logo like the "Intel Inside" logo, except that it said "Antec Outside" .

Here's a review.