I'm itching for a change of scenery with my box, and I figured I'd like to know what members around here liked. So what's a good, solid, mid-tower case? I do have a few criteria: no case window, and it must be around 100 bucks or less. Thanks!

I'm using this case. Great quality and awesome airflow. I've got 6 120mm case fans in it. Plenty of room.

Cooler Master 590

Are there any sort of "lanbox" style cases that will fit atx size motherboards?

do you *need* a lanbox?
These are good mid tower cases for their price (Rosewill is so underrated, some of their cases are of great quality)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16811147075
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16811147038

Theirs also the cooler master centurion 5 cac case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16811119068

If you can get one on ebay (they don't make them any more), the Antec Super LanBoy is one of the best Lan PC cases you're going to get.

Failing that the Sonata III by Antec is pretty much the same case in terms of size, but without a front fan grill/side window and in solid black.

These are my choices.

The Lian li is 110 shipped at the Egg but I am sure you could find it better price else where, I picked mine up used on a forum for 60 shipped.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16811112068

Cooler master is always a great option as well. Great build and low prices !!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16811119106

Thanks all for the input!

Damian, yeah, I could really use a lanbox case for my main rig as I take it to a lot of places rather frequently.

d4w50n, I'll check on the Super Lanboy shortly.

jlqrb, that Lian Li is a pretty super deal right now. I may go with that. I've always been a fan of their stylings.

I'm actually not that fond of coolermaster right now, I have a centurion 534 with a window, and I can't say I like it.

iv heard of the lanboy case, but i dont see anything special about it in terms of "lan" essential. Whats so great about it? Is it light weight or something?

After looking up that case, I had the same questions, Damian. Nevertheless, it has a window, which is something I'm not too fond of.

the Super Lanboy is light because it's made out of really thin aluminium... but that makes it really fragile and susceptible to mangled panels and indeed any part of the chassis... the original Lanboy is very small and it will annoy you (harddrives vs graphics card)

Directron have some decent aluminium cases (some are aluminium/steel):

Lian Li PC-7: http://www.directron.com/pc7.html
Lian Li PC-69: http://www.directron.com/pc69b.html
CoolerMaster Centurion 534: http://www.directron.com/rc534kkr2.html
Silverstone TJ-01: http://www.directron.com/ssttj01s.html
NZXT Adamas: http://www.directron.com/adamasblack.html (this looks pretty cool)

I really like my Tt Tsunami... you can get them without the window and they're very light, the whole case is aluminium - the chassis and front panel and strong, but the panels are quite thin and if you're careless you could bend/dent them (I haven't in the 4 years I've had mine and moved house about 3 or 4 times and lugged the case around a fair bit, even across the country on public transport lol)

I like the prices on those Lian Li cases. But I also like the size of the Silverstone. Would the Silverstone be large enough to fit my 2900 pro?

The good thing about the Super Lanboy is it's uber-light, and has all the space and bays of a standard full ATX case, and it can still fit one of the mega-sized geforce 8 cards.

I battered the case, moving it about loads, not a single scratch or dent on it through it's 2 years with me.

unless you have one of the really long versions that's bigger than the normal one, then yes... I think even the huge non-retail version would fit




It is rather standard and unexciting inside, and the small exhaust fan at the rear sets off alarm bells to me... you might have trouble physically fitting a tall CPU HS/F in this case...

Yeah, that's a good point. It looks kinda iffy if my Zalman 9700 would fit in there.