In-Win CE685.FH300TB3 300W MicroATX Slim Case

I like this case for the same reason that I like some other Inwin cases: they have stately appearances that make them appropriate for professional environments. Personally I don't need either water cooling or vibrant LEDs.My CE685 houses a NAS unit. It is a small form factor case because of its thin appearance, not because of its long front to back dimension. The existence of an external 5.25 inch drive bay allowed me to install some front superspeed USB ports, and I used the opening for a 3.5 inch drive to house the receiver of a Simerec remote control unit. Running the wires for the remote required some attention because storage got in the way. Adjacent to the 5.25 inch drive bay is an odd hard drive bracket. It works fine, but I had to install remote control wires as well as SATA cables with angled heads before I put the motherboard into the case because the fit between the hard drive bracket and outward-facing motherboard SATA ports was very tight. Nonetheless, using the hard drive bracket and the underside of the 5.25 inch bay allowed me to install two 2.5 inch SSD's with space between them. If anyone wonders, a 92mm case fan will fit into the bracket in which Inwin supplies a 90mm system fan, so that one can install a more silent 92mm fan if one desires. For my uses the case runs super cool, as the Pentium processor has never topped 60 degrees and the motherboard has not exceeded 45 degrees, even under heavy processor loads.

Overall, I like this case a lot for an HTPC build. It has a lot of neat features built in for assembly if you study it closely. It did not come with a manual, so that made it a little more difficult to figure some things out. The stock power supply is working well so far, though maybe a touch underpowered. However, I was trying to keep power consumption low anyway with my Ryzen 5 1600 CPU. I do have a fan repeatedly revving up and down, which is very annoying to listen to, even from across the room. So, if that's the power supply fan, I will replace the power supply. Some cons to think about: 1) the flip up cover for the large HDD interferes with the SATA cables exiting the MOBO sideways instead of up (ASRock AB350M Pro4)(had to cut the cover down and find ultralow profile right/left angle cables); 2) it could really use a large rear fan to improve case air flow from front to back (I'm adding two small fans up high); 3) you have to get the small form factor version GPU card (not all come with adapter plates); 4) there is limited height clearance for a CPU cooler (about 59 mm / 2.3 in); 5) it would be nice to have a USB-C port on the front (future-proofing); 6) in fact, a second 5.25" bay in front would be nice (better choice of front panels than 3.5"). However, at this price point, I would buy it again for an HTPC build. It's a nice-sized landscape oriented case with just enough room for the hardware I wanted (micro-ATX MOBO, water cooler for CPU, Blu Ray writer, GPU card, SSD for OS's, and HDD for media).

Nice, solid case..quiet..easy to assemble..Looks good, small footprint..seems to have a supply that is of quality..I loaded with a matx solution no problem..Designed to be used as htpc or tower..I am extremely pleased with this purchase for what I intended for..A compact, lower powered media player-basic office-network deviceA quality unit

This case is amazing to be honest. I wanted to downsize from atx motherboard to matx and this case is perfect for that. You can't fit a full size graphics card, which sucks, but there are some good low profile graphics cards that compensate for this. I thought cooling would be an issue since there is only one fan in the front but surprisingly it has pretty good airflow. I was also able to fit an amd wraith cooler into the case (the stock cooler with the ryzen 5 1500x cpu) It has almost no clearance above the fan, but it is enough for the cooler to still work. If this is a concern you could always get an aftermarket low profile cooler and it would also be fine. I mainly just like how the whole case is compact and easy to move and fit on small desks. In addition the side panel is super easy to open for quick access, which is great for me because I hated taking off the mid sized tower side panels. Even the included power supply is pretty good and has enough output for all my stuff, including a 3.5 inch HDD, 2.5 SDD, and a disk drive (plus what's listen below)Computer specs:cpu - amd ryzen 5 1500x w/ wraith spire coolergpu - GIGABYTE GeForce GT 1030 Low Profilemobo - B350M GAMING PRO MSI mATXram - Ballistix Sport LT 8GB Single DDR4 2666 MT/swifi card - TP-Link TL-WN881ND N300 PCI-E