Verdict: A 'silent' PC case for less than £50, but some corners have been cut.
The Nexus Caterpillar, with its noise-dampening foam, hidden optical drive bays and 'silent' fans, sounds like a tasty bargain for £50. However, the reason for the inverted commas around 'silent' is obvious: silence is the absence of sound, and therefore hardly applicable to a set of plastic fins whirring at 1,000rpm. Perhaps more accurately, the Caterpillar should be described as 'potentially very quiet' - but now you can see why we're journalists and not marketing managers.
Semantics aside, the Caterpillar is a neat midi-tower case. The external styling is either attractively minimalist or boring, depending on how generous you're feeling, but at least it hasn't been hit several times by the ugly stick. A pleasing design touch is the fine steel mesh that comprises most of the front of the case, although this is offset by a poor-quality plastic flap around the large power button. Underneath the flap are USB, FireWire and headset connections.
Instead of a door, the upper meshed front panel slides neatly down behind the lower meshed panel, like one of Mr Miyagi's oriental screens in 'The Karate Kid'. This method of hiding the three ugly optical drive bays is neater than using a door but, unfortunately, the build quality of the sliding panel isn't up to scratch. Pushing the panel down requires too much effort, and the mechanism is rough and noisy. If you don't lock the panel in its 'open' position, it will close itself - possibly on to that CD tray that you left open as you rummaged for your game CD. To further infuriate you, 'unlocking' the panel from its open position is a tricky process.
Inside, the case layout is rather peculiar and initially reminded us of a scene from 'Labyrinth', with the roof where the floor should be. We almost expected David Bowie to stroll into the lab wearing a pair of overly revealing tights. Our confusion wasn't helped by the left side panel (which is usually used for internal access) being riveted in place. This, plus the lack of holes in the motherboard tray, means that cables have to be routed within the main chamber only.
The case can accommodate either a normal ATX or micro-ATX motherboard, which has to be installed upside down. This means that your graphics card cooler will be on the upper side of its PCB.
However, the reason for the odd layout soon became clear - it aids airflow through the case and, as such, is actually the Caterpillar's strongest feature.
Air flows in from the front 120mm intake fan and is free to pass directly over the motherboard before being expelled by the rear 120mm fan, which is usefully placed next to your CPU cooler. This largely unrestricted airflow is due to the inversion of the motherboard and the placement of the four-bay hard disk caddy in the centre of the floor of the case.
Despite having four hard disk bays, we'd only use two of these, as we'd want some room in between our hot-running hard disks. The placement also means that you can't use a PSU that's longer than 150mm. The screwless fixings for the expansion slots are a welcome feature, though.
The bare panels and roof inside the Caterpillar have been lined with foam to try to dampen the noise your PC makes. However, although Nexus stresses that this is similar to the foam used in professional audio studios, it's incorrect to say that this will result in a quieter case. The bumpy textured foam is used to change the shape of a sound wave before it hits a wall of a studio, thereby reducing unwanted 'flutter echoes'. Foam can't actually block sound to any great degree, as it isn't a substantial enough material. Instead, most of the sound dampening will be a result of the case's steel exoskeleton. However, the Caterpillar is still a reasonably light case at 6.4kg.
Foam also acts as a thermal insulator (it's a load of air bubbles, for goodness' sake), so rather than foam on the roof of the Caterpillar, we'd prefer roof vents for extra fans or a water-cooling radiator.
Conclusion
The Caterpillar promises to be silent (or at least very quiet), but it's the steel construction and the slow-spinning fans that deliver this promise - the foam is purely a placebo. However, while it's undeniably the basis of a quiet PC, the Caterpillar has shortcomings elsewhere. The sliding front panel is cheap, flimsy and a constant irritation when using your optical drives. We're generally happy with the unusual internal layout, but the quality of the exterior would make us question parting with £50 for the Caterpillar.
