A+ CS-188AF

Verdict: Good build quality, sleek design and a huge side intake fan make this budget case shine.

You'd expect a budget PC case that costs less than £30 to be some kind of ugly metal or plastic box that's only slightly preferable to heaping all your prized components together on the floor. You might hope for some form of cooling (although perhaps nothing particularly elegant), and for the case to let you route cables neatly to aid whatever airflow it might offer. Neither quality is guaranteed, however, so the fact that the CS-188AF is vastly preferable to heaping PC kit on the floor, has interesting cooling and is neatly presented to make system building easy is impressive. The CS-188AF also has unexpected bonuses, in that it looks and feels good, too.

From the outside, the CS-188AF looks decidedly interesting for a budget case. The front is sleek, with an attractive, well-made door. The gloss flash running down the fascia and velvety feel of the material around it give the CS-188AF more grace than many cases. It provides two USB 2 sockets, a FireWire port and stereo output, plus microphone ports low down on the right-hand side.

Behind the door are four 5.25in drive bays and a pair of external 3.5in bays. This is enough for most people's needs, and provides plenty of room for twin optical drives, media card readers and fan controllers. Beneath these, inside the case, is the hard disk drive rack, in which you can install up to five hard disks. As ever, it's sensible to space out your hard disks, but this still means that the CS-188AF can comfortably house three disks. No fan is supplied for the hard disk cage fan mount (which will take 80mm, 92mm and 120mm fans), so it would be a good idea to fit one. It sucks up air from the vent between the rugged plastic fascia and the steel endoskeleton, which isn't ideal but should be adequate.

A 3-pin fan header wire runs from the dial on the lower left-hand side into the case. This lets you adjust the fan speed manually, avoiding the need to route a fan cable to the motherboard or to rely on PWM-based fan management.

At the rear of the case is an exhaust fan mount that will accept any of the three standard fan sizes. Usually, the rear exhaust fan is the most important, but with the CS-AF188, any rear fan has its thunder very much stolen by the giant side-panel fan. At a whopping 250mm, the side fan is able to cover the CPU and GPU directly, and any air it blasts over these hot components will be forced out through the exhaust vent or into the PSU intake. As you'll want the side fan to be your primary intake, and the pattern of air it blows is an expanding cone, it would be a good idea to set your hard disk fan as an exhaust to expel air towards the front of the case. This will encourage throw-off air from the side fan to travel over your disks, enhancing the airflow throughout the case.

Apart from the unorthodox cooling method, the interior of the CS-AF188 is pretty ordinary. This is a good thing, as there are no twisted hard disk bays to restrict airflow and no silly gimmicks to needlessly add to the price.

The build quality is also surprisingly high, with no blade-like machined edges or sharp pointed parts ready to slice a finger and spill blood all over your new build. It may be minimal, but nasty and poorly made it certainly isn't. Thanks to the absence of gimmicks and extra features, the CS-AF188 offers the full amount of midi-tower space available to help bed down a system quickly and easily. It will even accommodate a GeForce 8800 GTX or Ultra, or an ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT, provided you fit the card around your hard disks.

Only the PSU mount gives us slight cause for concern. The PSU is held in place by the usual four screws and a small shelf placed near the rear of the case. If you plan to use an overly long PSU, you might place too much strain on the mounting screws, as the bulk of the power unit projects from the end of this shelf. However, if you're building a system on a midi-tower scale, you shouldn't need a PSU of epic proportions.

Conclusion

The A+ Case CS-188AF is something of a masterpiece as far as budget cases are concerned. The designers have cooked up a plan to make a cheap yet seemingly luxurious case based on a huge monster side-intake fan for cooling, and they've stuck to this plan incredibly well. With its minimalist, high-quality front and the embellishment of the blue-glowing giant side fan, the CS-188AF looks good. The inside of the case is well made and devoid of gimmicks and pointless frippery, so it's easy to build a high-performance system that will be well ventilated. For less than £30, the CS-188AF is a remarkable case. Budget case makers take note: this is how to design a quality case for a low price.

• Revoltec FightMouse Pro - Peripherals
• SilverStone Raven RV01 - Cases
• Sapphire 1GB HD 4850 X2 - Graphics cards
• Microsoft SideWinder X8 - Peripherals
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 - Graphics cards
• Sapphire 1GB HD 4870 Toxic - Graphics cards
• Shuttle X27D - Desktop PCs