Gigabyte 3D AURORA Case

Getting the guts in Can also be used as a night light

Thanks to the spacious interior and tool free design, getting your rig together doesn't take much time at all. As we mentioned earlier, there's plenty of room for a power supply of just about any size. There's also plenty of room to hide any unneeded cables and power chords, without disrupting the airflow in the case. We installed two different socket 939 motherboards into this case, the ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe and the Abit AV8, and both fit right in. We did run into a slight annoyance when installing the Abit AV8 though. Abit has put the IDE ports on the very edge of the motherboard. Because of this, plugging in the IDE cables was a bit tricky, but not impossible. Before purchasing this case, we recommend that you take your motherboard layout into consideration. The vast majority of motherboards shouldn't be a problem though.

With everything assembled and the juice flowing, the final result looks pretty impressive. As you can see, with the lights on, the case emits a fairly strong blue glow. With the lights off, however, the case really shines. While a clear side panel window would have been nice, especially for those of you who really like to show off your rig, the wire mesh side panel Gigabyte has chosen goes really well with the rest of the case. The green PSU cables are clearly seen, and we imagine a water cooling kit with light reactive liquid would work with the case. Gigabyte's light beam display is also a flashy touch, and they even include instructions on how to make your own.

Looks pretty impressive, doesn't it? If you're anything like us, you'll probably want to show this case off to a few people once your entire system is assembled, but to so it you might want to invite people over to your place. Though the 3D Aurora is built out of lightweight aluminum, the case isn't exactly light as a feather. And with a full complement of hardware inside, moving the case became somewhat of a chore. It's not so much the weight of the case, but the size that makes holding it a bit awkward (as the UPS guy found out when delivering this puppy to the lab).