Author: Brent Earls Date: January 17, 2008 Manufacturer: GMC Provider: GMC

« Introduction and packaging | Internal Tour » Page 2: External Tour

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Here is the actual case. It’s got a very glossy exterior, so please excuse all of the reflections in the following images. There are several noteworthy details you can pick up on from looking at the front of this case; the most notable, no visible front 5.25” bays. This is the key feature of this case, instead of having a normal, horizontal bay; this one is vertical and made for a single CD-ROM. You can see the eject button for the optical drive on the side of the case about mid-way up. It opens the drive via a small lever on a pivot that presses the drive's eject button. This works well on two separate drives that I tested, and is slightly adjustable for different layouts. This optical drive placement also explains the small size of the case even though it is able to accept a full size ATX motherboard. The case is extremely light weight too. It is made from very thin steel, almost too thin at some times, as I accidentally bent a few pieces throughout this review. You can see a small vent at the bottom side of the plastic front panel, and two more vents on the side of the case. Due to the placement of the optical drive, there is no front intake.


The front of the case in better detail shows a large power button in the center of the bottom of the case. This button has a nice click to it so you know you’ve pressed it. The grey area above is where the optical drive rises. The power LED and HDD LEDs are behind the power button. It lights up blue and flashes red when there is HDD activity, which creates a nice effect. There are also blue LEDs above the optical drive cavity.


On the back of the case we find two 80mm fan exhausts, the power supply mount, I/O port and PCI slots. This case is designed with punch out PCI slots; and all were originally present until I removed a few when testing. The motherboard I/O port is a sticking point for me, there isn’t one supplied by GMC. While I understand the difficulty with modern motherboards being so varied, some form of generic port would have been nice. You can also see the two nicely sized thumbscrews holding the side panel in place.


The case includes rooftop I/O for two USB ports, headphone, microphone and a reset button. I really like this reset button, as it is out of the way enough to keep you from accidentally hitting it, but is still easy to get to. If you’re wondering about accidentally hitting it when fumbling for a headphone port in the dark, it is recessed into the case. Below, in the CD-ROM bay you can see the outline of an opening in the bottom. Sadly, this door is a snap in, and isn’t made to stick to your optical drive, so there will be a large hole when the drive is in place, as shown later in the assembled machine. That’s not to say that 20 minutes of modification wouldn’t grant you a nice result.

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