RAIJINTEK ASTERION PLUS No Power Supply ATX Full Tower (Black)

I really like this case, even though I have some love-hate feelings about it. I was going for a super compact workstation build, and I was able to accomplish that with this case. It's really small, probably about as small as a full ATX case can be. It's small enough that I can carry it under one arm, and I'm only 5'7". Aesthetics are good also. Even with it being a fairly plain looking case, the black metal exterior looks good and holds up well. The power button/light also includes hard drive read/write indicators, which is a nice touch. Keep in mind, this is an INVERTED ATX case, meaning that your mobo will go in upside-down compared to normal full size cases. This made for a couple of interesting wiring situations, but overall didn't cause a problem. I gave this case a 4 out of 5 stars. Here are my gripes:1. No thumb screws. Anywhere. I hate the idea that if I need to open up or work on my computer that I need to find or carry a screwdriver with me.2. Only one case fan. For reasons you'll read later, you'll need to invest in more case fans. Plus the stock fan did not strike me as being particularly "good".3. Airflow kinda blows. This case really only accommodates 3 case fans: 2 on the top, and one in the back. This leaves builders with very limited options regarding airflow. Because of this, I chose to purchase 3 BeQuiet fans, two for intake at the top and one to replace the stock exhaust fan in the back.4. Very little space. This is kind of a pro and a con, since this is the very reason the case is as small as it is. That said, this case will force you into some fairly complex building situations. For instance, my top case fans had to be removed while I was building because the mobo would not fit if the fans were installed first. This case basically forces you into a specific build order (to some extent), and if you get it wrong you will be forced to take out installed components before you can move forward. Once everything is in the case, wiring and cable management is another hurdle.5. Case management. There basically isn't any. Since the power supply is mounted right next to the mobo, and the back side of the computer case is incredibly shallow, you're forced to route cables from the power supply, through the grommets, just to turn them around again to plug them back in at the front. The only other option would be to bend them around into a clump and wire tie them above the power supply, which would look like crap.6. Trapped heat. The power supply is mounted exhaust side facing the bottom of the case. This case sits incredibly close to the floor / desk / work-surface. Not only is this bad for allowing heat to escape the case, it also makes for a very warm area below the case. If you have this computer on a wood surface with a delicate finish, I could see how the heat could potentially fade or damage the finish over time. Because of this I've opted to lay the computer on its side. Not only does this block any air restrictions, it also allows me to use the "side" of the case as a surface to put external hard drives and hot-swap-able peripherals on.Overall, despite my gripes, I really do like this case. If I were to do it all over again I wouldn't hesitate buying and using this. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for new builders, as it will make things harder than usual. But if compact is the goal, look no further.

Not sure how to really start out, but if you were a Lian LI A05NB owner of the past, this is more or less the modern recreation albeit it is heavier due to the use of steel and glass and thicker Aluminum parts.Compared to Lian li? Well... Old Lian Li is excellent and I would say my A05 is a step above this due to their old precision manufacturing.. BUT.. Modern Lian LI has taking a step back and is generally much worse on average likely due to outsourcing manufacturing to china. The Taiwanese Lian LI's were clearly a step above and the price started to reflect that after 2010..(ended up with less sales). I bought this case because Lian Li does not offer a modern A05 in 2018/2019.This Raijintek is also made in China and it isn't a con per say, but the Taiwanese Lian Li manufacturing was INSANELY good at one point and basically made everything else seem like garbage in terms of price points. The overall quality of this unit is pretty good or above average if you compare it to the mid range NZXT or Corsair Products in the $100-200 USD price range.Problems... I think the top dust filter is effective, but its not the best design. It "bends" around and doesn't look flush if I had to best explain it. The dust filter they use on the new Ophion Case is a step above and I would prefer this if The Thetis model every got redesigned. I have mine sucking air in from the top to exhaust out back like a normal case. Temps are/were surprisingly good with a 240 Radiator and a single 120mm (stock) exhaust on a i7 7700k and GTX1070 combo.The bottom fan mount doesn't work at all with certain motherboards. Basically a useless design implementation and should have been offset more and or use with a 240 or 280mm rad on bottom if the feet could be extended for bottom > top airflow. (since hot air rises).PSU position is fine and the design does make sense but I think there should be front venting with the current design. If a bottom (intake) to top air flow (exhaust) was implemented, the current solution would be completely fine.Sad point - My front glass panel randomly shattered without me dropping it or anything.I think what happened was that I forgot to plug my rear exhaust fan and while I would suck air in, a lot of heat got trapped around the mid section.. When I went to go "Fix it" the panel just spontaneously shattered when starting to unscrew it. I asked Raijintek Support how much a replacement would cost and they told me it would be around $50 Shipped on a case that I only paid $97 USD with tax for. I don't blame the support rep at all and I completely understand the situation I am in. The person in charge of support actually does a really good job and responds well to concerns or issues when compared to other brands... but I'm not going to spend $50 on a side panel when I can basically get this case for $70 shipped to my door (Newegg ran a sale a week ago)With that said. I recommend the Aluminum side panel version or wait for a revision with Ophion style upgrades. IF Raijintek listens and makes changes based on the above suggestions I'd be so insanely grateful and want to support them tenfold, but I'm only 1 person out of a big market of players and people.Lian Li has become incompetent and I feel like Raijintek is the only brand on the market that is actually willing to take chances for the greater good of PC hardware outside of solely focusing on profit margins like the bigger brands that are only willing to sell generic products.My review is 3 stars, but don't get me wrong. This is a great case and product for the money assuming everything works as intended. 1 star is going to be deduced for the glass panel as I'm sort of in a weird spot here and willing to take mutual blame outside of potential overseen design issues. So overall this is a 4/5 product, but 3/5 due to glass randomly breaking without me dropping it or anything

It's a full ATX case that looks great and is smaller than a lot of mATX cases, but be careful with power supply selection. My Corsair 450 modular wouldn't work because of power connector placement. Seasonic 450 worked well. I built this little bad boy into my Inception Hyper-V. It's a physical Hyper-V host running virtual AD, file server, and two nested HyperV hosts as a failover cluster with shared storage supporting 2 fault-tolerant VMs, a WSE server and a Win 10 Pro client.This machine can be built for about $400 with some used parts. Supermicro X8SIL-F is about $35-40 on eBay, and the Xeon X3450 is $20. 32GB ECC Registered RAM is available from Amazon for about $115 (https://amzn.to/2LdXDqc) , a Seasonic 450W power supply is $50 (https://amzn.to/2LeXenw), and a Samsung 250GB SSD is $90 (https://amzn.to/2GvPRV3).The software is another story - if you don't have access to Windows licenses, you could go with Xen or ESXi or even the CLI Hyper-V and use Linux guests. This would be a more cloud-oriented lab solution, but I'm focused on MS stuff since I mostly support Windows Server and Office 365.Also no question, 32GB is not a ton. You get about 10-12GB for VMs on the cluster. I could up that to 14GB or so by running StarWind iSCSI on the AD for storage instead of a separate MS iSCSI file server. But you could build two $400 VM servers and do a workgroup cluster without AD (Windows 2016 supports that now!) and it would still be cheaper than a new X11 board and 64GB of ECC DDR4 RAM. Now I'm thinking about building another one!