Chenming 301-KE, Aluminum Case

The door to the Chenming 301-KE is wrapped in bubble wrap and placed inside the case for shipping. The center of the door can be detached for modding purposes. As you can see, the door has an impressive shine.

Inside:

Enough about the case's outside appearance.

The 3 1/2 inch drive mount is detachable for easy installation. Simply detach, screw in the drives, and slide back into the aluminum rack. The 3 1/2 inch drive bay supports three 1 inch drives.

An 80mm fan can be mounted under the detachable drive bay. The fan is located toward the back of the case; a perfect location because air will flow over the motherboard instead of in front like other case designs. Enough room is left in front of the fan, toward the window, to mount a lighting switch.

The metal of the Chenming 301-KE will not tear your skin apart because it is folded over and polished off. I would rather pay more for a case that is not going to dice me apart than pay the savings in Band Aids.

As I mentioned earlier, the 301-KE, comes with only one rail for each 5 1/4 inch drive. The rail slides into the motherboard side of the case since there is no screw driver access on this side.

The window side of the case has the standard slots for screwing a drive in. These are slots and not holes, which allows the face of each drive to rest flush with the other drives. Many fan controllers do not sit flush with CD-ROMs, using slots all these devices can be lined up.

LED and USB cables are neatly wrapped up to ensure less of a mess inside the case. The soft power and LED indicator cables are one solid strand until the last few inches where they break apart. This is a nice feature of Chenming cases that keep the case neat and improve airflow. Each cable is also clearly labeled.