SILVERSTONE Black Aluminum skin reinforced plastic front panel, 0.8mm SECC body MILO Series ML03B Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case

Pros: Black Aluminum, 3 hard drive locations (2x3.5, 1x2.5), support for standard ATX power supply, looks like any other HT component.

Cons: Weird front bezel has texture....but they don't provide a matching CD/DVD/BR drive cover. Brushed aluminum instead of textured front would have been much better.

Tight fit between optical drive and Power Supply. 2 hard drive locations, 1 3.5 and the single 2.5, are blocked and hard to get to because of the lack of space from the power supply and optical drive. Not very good cable management.

Other Thoughts: Except for the weird front and lack of optical cover, I love this case.

I had original built my son a pc for school and light gaming:

ASRockl A55M-HVS mATX mobo
AMD A4 3300 Proc
Team Elite 4gb ram (2x2gb)
XFX HD6450 for dual graphics
64gb SSD for OS and 2 1TB drives for data


Originally this was in a Cougar Solution case with a Cougar SL500 500w PS...but I ended up getting a great deal on an iMac which fit my kid's room/desk better (I installed Bootcamp/Windows 7!). So I took the components and fit them into the Silverstone case. Fortunately the PS and the optical drive fit...I installed the ssd and one of the TB drives before installing the PS but I still had issues trying to hook everything up, cable management sort of sucks.

But it works and it looks good on top of my entertainment center with my Cable box.

Pros: Size, full size (small) psu, USB 3.0 front ports, front looks decent, plenty of room for main board fan and memory.

Cons: As others have said.... Really really cramped when using a DVD drive. Only about 1inch clearance between the drive and psu. No place to hide or route cables effectively. I thought hey, I route cables like a champ on my other builds. Expect to do some serious psu cable modification if you want to put multiple drives of any size in this case and keep it clean inside.i currently have a scary birds nest of cables where they want you to mount a drive on a piece of plastic in front of the main board. It works but airflow for your HDs could be a problem down the road

Other Thoughts: Looks and build quality. I have found after doing many builds that the cases offered on the market are nearly all cheap and never look or feel as good as in the pictures. The front plastic face plate on this unit is not horrible but the sticker that actually gets the look you want is cheesy. I've spent 30-200 dollars on cases and they have all been of poor manufacturing quality. Own cases from HP,gateway, etc are made of better materials and with better tolerances. I may have to try a Liam Li case as for the money people spend on those you better get a great case. More of a gripe to all manufactures but eh

Pros: Good quality

Cons: None

Pros: Fits right in with the rest of the entertainment center, For the price this case is nice and solid. As everyone else states, make sure you don't buy too large of a power supply if you plan on putting an optical drive in here. This is a small profile case, so be prepared to spend extra time dealing with everything being a very tight fight

Cons: The SSD mounting bracket hangs over the motherboard a bit. If you buy a motherboard where the main power hookup and usb 3.0 hookup are on the opposite side of the board from all of the main outputs, you will have problems. I had to move the ssd bracket over into the corner of the case to get the cables to plug in. The shape and placement of this bracket is probably the one thing I really did not like on this case.

The holes on the side of the case where you would place your case fans do not perfectly line up with 80mm fan holes. I used the included rubber mounts with the fans I purchased, so this slight misalignment was not a major issue. However, if you plan on screwing fans directly to the side of the case you will have problems.

On my case the front USB 3.0 ports are only registering as 2.0 ports Sadly, I will have to obtain a 3.0 header hookup to find out if this is a problem with the motherboard or the case.

Other Thoughts: If you like your cables looking nice and neat, plan on spending a decent amount of time working on cable routing. I put an ssd and a 2TB storage drive and an optical drive in here and there is very little clearance for the motherboard power cables.

The mounting scheme for the mechanical drive consists of 4 rubber grommets on the bottom of the case. These grommets are very soft and you need to be careful about how far you tighten these screws down.

Pros: SLEEK, NICE LAY OUT INSIDE NOT BAD TO WORK IN

Cons: NEEDS A TAD BIT MORE ROOM INSIDE DEPTH WISE, WASNT IMPRESSED WITH THE QUALITY CONTROL

Pros: The 140mm limit on the power supply is only if you plan on installing an optical drive, other than that any power supply should fit.

Normal ATX power supply.

Cons: Front hangs over the side about 3mm on the right side, and ramps up on the right top, and sticks up about 2mm higher than the top.

Rubber grommets for the drives are more like a piece of tube and the head for the mounting screws are only about 1mm bigger than the shaft. You can pull them through the hole without to much problem.

The front is more a grayish black, like the cheapest plastic they could find, and it wouldn't hold it's color.

I have never seen this level of cheap in a case b4.

Other Thoughts: ASRock H77M LGA 1155 Intel H77
SeaSonic SST-300 ET Power Supply
Intel G540 Processor
G.Skill 4GB (2x2GB) 10600CL9D-4GBPK
Silverstone Milo ML03B Case

Pros: small form factor, good looking unit

Cons: Comes with an option for 4 additional 80mm case fans to be mounted along the right side. Depending on your fans they may or may not fit. I purchased 4 SilenX EFX-08-12 80mm Effizio and the last one just won't fit. By my measurements I'm short around 2mm worth of space. It would be nice if they would add another set of vent holes to the depth of the unit. It would only increase it the depth by around 5mm and then you could have a little more room for the fans.

Pros: This case is nice and roomy. It is about the same width as my directTV box but taller. It has feet under it to keep it up off the service. Keeping my HTPC cool shouldn't be a problem in this case. It was easy to install everything. It came with cord management stuff, and plenty of screws. It was very easy installing all my components into it. It went back together easily and all the holes lined up perfect.

Cons: It's big, but I knew that going in

Other Thoughts: It's a big case, so if you have an entertainment center that doesn't have a lot of room in it, you are going to need to go smaller. It fits a mini ITX with plenty of room to spare. IMO, the quality of this case is quite good for the price.

Pros: This case is very nice, looks nice, and has plenty of ventilation. It feels solid and i'm proud to have it in my entertainment center. I was going to go with an off brand for my htpc but decided to go with this, i'm glad I did because it looks great!

Cons: Doesn't have a built in wirelss receiver or a hidden internal screen to hid a wireless IR receiver. Wish it did, or even a spare dvd door insert that has a IR receiver plate to install. I knew this before purchasing and I'm fine with it, not really a con, just something I wish all htpc cases had. Don't like having to have a little usb cable come around top or on the side.

Pros: Finding a good HTPC that isn't a lot of money can be hard! This case is no home run but they made alot from what they had to work with, which is not a lot of space. This is a nice compact case and is built well...and for the money, it can't really be beat.

Cons: Only issue cosmetically is that the front has a sort of veined appearance which gives it a unique sheen which is quite nice, however, the drive will be a big rectangle which doesn't belong. So if aesthetics is a big deal to you, this may disappoint.
Size is a pro of this case but is also a con. The power supply butts up against the optical drive so you need to do some research. The depth of the power supply needs to be less than 5.75 inches and you need to also make sure you have right angle power and sata connectors on your drive. if you do this, all will be well. If you don't, you will find yourself buying a different supply as I did. I used NewEgg item number N82E16817139026 which was still a bit of a tight fit but you can't complain too much when you are trying to pack everything into a small box.
The only thing that was still a little tricky was the hard drive mount. You have to attach the hard drive to the mount and then attach the mount to the case which took a few attempts as the screws became hard to get to with the drive in the way while having to make sure you keep the front panel cables out of the way.

Other Thoughts: As long as you make sure you get the right hardware to go in the case, and you have an eye for eliminating clutter and know how to route wires and such to make it fit, this is a great case and the extra time involved in locating correct parts is made up for in the cost. I have 2 HTPC cases made by SILVERSTONE and have been very happy with both of them. HTPC cases are generally a lot trickier to build and make everything fit so I never blame a company for doing what they can with the space and format given.