Fractal Design Core 1000 Cases, Black (FD-CA-CORE-1000-BL)

For 50 bucks you get ripped off.Outdated design with absolutely no cable management, zero passthroughs, top mounted psu, cheap material, sharp edges *yes I cut myself several times* and to top it off it has the worst ventilation I've ever seen... absolutely none on the top of the case... the rear exhaust is a 92mm fan slot and yes you have to purchase an extra fan for it... for a few more bucks you're going to have a night and day difference in build quality design and saftey so spend the little extra and avoid this like the plague.FYI I already submitted a review which was reported for "harassment" and was automatically removed by Amazon so... it's likely they are playing the Amazon report trick to keep their reviews high.

I'm going to copy the review I did for the newer version of this case as the cases are exactly the same other than on the new one there is one USB 3 port and one USB 2 on the side of the front panel instead of two USB 2 as this case has. I see a few low star reviews on here that are not quite justified as they did not know how to build using the case, the HDs mount fine for example on the side panel, they do not have to installed in your 5 1/4 bays. Anyway, here is my copied review. I used about 12 of these, and 18 of the new version and they are the same case other than the USB port change.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 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 ever 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!

This is the best cheap case I have had the pleasure to work with and I've worked with quite a few. The design of cheap cases has always been wanting. They typically didn't feature large enough fans, good looks, or smart engineering. This case is nicely designed and looks good.The case is made of very light gauge metal so it is a little bit flimsy, but this is expected in an inexpensive case so I will not fault it for that. The front panel though is attractive and comes with a large 120mm fan and dust cover which is a nice touch in a cheap case.The case is very small so don't expect to fit multiple harddrives and multiple GPUs in this thing, but it can fit a high end GPU and a mATX board and short tower cooler. Massive tower coolers will not quite fit but the cooling in the case is good enough for a high end GPU and an overclocked CPU so the only thing you can't have is a lot of drives.The only thing I can fault the case for is the location of the power button and ports on the bottom right side of the case sticking out to the right. It would be better if this pointed forward but they designed this case to sit on your desk and I guess it makes sense in that position, though I never put my computer on my desk.

My biggest beef with this case is that the hard disk apparently only fits into the 5.25" bays where one usually puts CD/DVD drives. It can only accommodate two total, and that means you get one and only one hard disk if you want to have DVD drive too. And thermal issues are likely to arise down the road.From the pictures, it looks like the hard disk can be put about midway high, similar to just about EVERY OTHER CASE on the market. But no. In this case, no hard disk will fit there. Instead they have to go in the DVD drive bay.Okay, so that's my big complaint. Now for a smaller complaint: The fan in front of the case connects via a 3-pin connector which my motherboard would not accommodate. I doubt many boards would. Most motherboard fan connectors I've seen are 4-pin, not 3. So now I have a useless fan. Again, this may lead to thermal issues.It's not all bad news though----I'm at least happy with the workmanship. The metal is a bit flimsy, but not too bad. Considering the price, it's a fairly well-built case, and it has a nice appearance. For Fractal Design to put the "front panel" on the side was a dumb move, but no big deal to me. It looks pretty cool, for a budget case.But you can get as good of workmanship without having to deal with the hard disk and thermal nightmares. For example, I really love my HEC/Compucase 6K60BS, and I paid less for that than for the Core 1000. And the Compucase 6K11BB looks good too. Sometimes Antec has good deals on their mATX/Earthwatts combos. The point is, there are much better options available than this Core 1000. I'm really bummed out that I'm stuck with it now.