Fractal Design Core 3500 Case for Computer - Black

For the price it's a pretty good case. It has really good build quality and comes loads of screws to mount everything. For a first time build it's a pretty good choice with pretty of room for cable management. I'm not going to go over all the good bits of the case as at this price point you expect certain things to be fulfilled by the manufacturer. For my particular needs however I just couldn't get over it's shortcomings.1) The roof of the housing is extremely flimsy, it literally bends slightly when you put some 140mm fans in. On my build one of my nzxt fan blade got caught on the roof of the case and bent the wrong way.2) Really, really, really not a fan of the hard drive mounting solution. It's fine if you have SSDs but for mechanical hard drives I don't like the idea of mounting it vertically. It's too much faff and having a hard drive caddy just makes things easier in my opinion. Plus even when using right angled sata cable the clearance between the drive and the side panel feels incredibly tiny. Not a fan. Additionally the SSD mounting brackets are on the backplate. A really awkward place especially if you want some headroom for cable management.3) The power LED on the front is too bright. Obviously you won't be looking at it directly but it's just too bright even when incidently looking at it.4) The two front usbs cut out intermitantly from time to time. Its something that I noticed after a week of usage and it doesn't happen all the time but it's like gremlins with this thing. It might be my motherboard but I didn't have this issue with my previous case.5) I don't understand the point of mounting fans at the front when there are no vents there. Yet there's a fan mounted at the front when you first open it up. Weird.6) This one is a pet peeve of mine. They do this weird thing where they give you just enough screws to fall short of any specific build. It's weird. You've got 8 screws for mounting two mechanical HDDS and 8 for mounting 2 fans. But there's space to mount 4 of each. You get 8 screws for SSDS but there's space to mount 6 of them. It's just a weird cost cutting measure and I don't get it.Overall it's fine for a first time build but once you finish you'll feel like you can do better in a year or two.

I brought this case for a workstation build for my job (computer programmer) and this case offers that nice professional look while still supporting all the full sized graphics cards.Lets start with the actual computer build, everything went smoothly and it was actually a pleasure to build in there's plenty of room to cable manage behind the motherboard tray (which is amazing at the price) and to top it all off the entire case is painted including the interior.Case airflow is also a good point the case supports 2 intake fans on the front, 1 rear exhaust and 2 top exhaust fans, this means you can keep even high end hardware cool provided to do the proper amounts of cable management, I have an i7 3770 with a CoolerMaster Seidon 120mm cooler installed and the i7 reaches a maximum of 60c at full tilt so cooling isn't a problem at all.Now onto the 2 bad points, first off my biggest gripe with this case is the thumb screws that hold the 2 side panels onto the case, now theres nothing wrong with the screws themselves but the problem I had was once used a few times they wouldn't grip into the holes again now I don't know if this was just my case in particular or if it's a problem but the problem can be rectified by replacing the thumb screws with the fan/power supply self tapping screws (some are provided), these hold the side panels on perfectly the only downside now is I need a screwdriver to open the case.My final gripe is the filter for the power supply, the mounting system is terrible I constantly kept pulling it off when moving the case around so I ended up removing it completely (luckily the office isn't really dusty) but to be honest I can let this fly as the case is so cheap (some corners had to be cut to make it for this price after all).I fully recommend this case for a budget build or someone looking to build their first computer as this is a really easy case to work with. I'm only giving this 4 stars because of the thumbscrew issue but it's a really good case otherwise./

The Core 1500 is a nice, solid well-built case. Looks professional and the airflow inside the case is very good for a MicroATX once you remove the top 3.5" drive bay (which I don't need). For context, I can overclock a 4690k to 4.5 GHz in this case and stay at 70 'C under Prime95 load - with a mid-quality air cooler - the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO will fit nicely into this case with a little bit of room to spare.Some of the screws seem to have mediocre quality threading and required a serious bit of fiddling to get them to turn right, and the thumbscrews for the 5.25" drives are very easy to cross-thread, so be careful.I got a non-modular fully wired PSU for this case, and in hindsight a modular PSU would have been better, but it's not impossible to fit all of the cables in. A good point of this case is that the 12V ATX cable managed to fit around the back of the motherboard plate, significantly improving the cable management.If you're planning to do SLI or CrossFire, don't bother in this case, it's too small and you'll probably bump into the power supply. Likewise if you're hoping to put some insane complicated cooling system in, don't bother either. You can apparently fit a water cooler radiator in this case but it will be a tight squeeze - there's some space at the front to put a radiator, it seems. If you want to water-cool in this case, you'll practically need a modular power supply.However, if you're like me and you only expect to run a single graphics card, a few hard drives, an SSD and a decent overclock, this case will probably suit you just fine. If this case was any more expensive I wouldn't recommend it, but the price point is competitive and worth it. Alternatively, you might want to look at the Core 2500 case by the same company, which I think is a little taller, but you may not be able to route the ATX power cable round the back of the motherboard.