Building with the Core 1100
The side panels are easily removed with two thumbscrews on each side, and once open we see a very similar layout to the other Core series enclosures.
Looking toward the front of the case we see the front fan opening, which comes with a factory installed 120mm intake fan.
Up front we see the hard drive panel, a long bracket that replaces the traditional hard drive cage.
This design choice is understandable considering the space limitations of the enclosure, but though well-implemented it is still inconvenient for drive swaps.
The bracket supports 2.5" and 3.5" drives. 3.5" mounts have rubber washers to reduce vibration
With the power supply mounted above the motherboard tray we can install the motherboard. I chose mini-ITX for this build, though naturally micro-ATX motherboards are fully supported.
There is no cutout behind the motherboard, so I had to remove the board to install the mounting bracket for my Noctua CPU cooler. In fact, there are no cable routing openings, either.
Once the motherboard is in place with the CPU cooler attached, I installed the graphics card.
There is plenty of room for longer video cards, which would extend behind the HDD bracket
After reattaching the hard drive bracket, connecting power cables, and attempting to neaten up the cable mess a bit, the build was complete.
Around the back there is little to report, as again there are no cutouts behind the motherboard tray.
With the build complete next we'll see how it performed in temperature and noise testing.
This is great for those
This is great for those “console killer” low-budget, $300-$600 builds.
Not bad for the price but
Not bad for the price but it’s so plain.
It cost them money to paint it black. Why not offer a different color to make it stand out from the literally dozens of other cases at this price?
I dunno who is doing the design down at Fractal but they seemed stuck in the 80s styling is a huge turn off.
I just picked up one of these
I just picked up one of these for $30 and free shipping on Newegg yesterday. Perfect for housing my Smoothwall router.
The way you have reported the
The way you have reported the noise level is meaningless, you want to quote dBA instead. “Noise level above ambient” doesn’t really mean anything; we don’t know the characteristics of your ambient noise and dB isn’t a linear scale that you can just add and subtract.
That said, it’d also be nice if there was a comparison to other cases in both the temperature and noise charts, as each reviewer does testing a bit differently and a like-for-like test against other cases is valuable.
“Plain” isn’t a curse! This
“Plain” isn’t a curse! This looks like a solid, serviceable case, and I’m considering it for my next build.