Cougar MG100 Cases

This is a nice case for the money. Black inside and out. Two 5.25" bays (2 external); three 3.5" bays (1 external). Front USB 3.0 port a big PLUS, especially in this price range. Tool-free clips are on both sides of drive bays, and the far side ones do require a little "working by feel". Mount points for the 3 additional 120mm fans are located: 1 front, and 2 side. Expansion slots (x4) are break-outs.Build notes: (For those accustomed to assembling MicroATX workstations, this may be SOP and just part of the learning curve.)Prior to this build, the smallest workstation I'd assembled was housed in a mid-tower case. Now, I typically mount the CPU, CPU heat sink, and RAM onto my motherboards prior to installing them into a case. I also typically install the components in the following order: power supply, motherboard (with CPU, CPU heat sink, and RAM), internal drives, external drives.In this instance, however, I discovered (after the fact) that I needed to leave the CPU heat sink off of the motherboard until after I installed (1) the motherboard, and then (2) everything that was going into the 3.5" drive bays. Why? Because internal 3.5" HDDs cannot be installed (or removed) with a CPU heat sink installed. It's that tight a squeeze.Having missed this fact prior to marrying heat sink to CPU, I was fortunate to discover that temporarily removing the cooling fan from my CPU's heat sink allowed just enough room to slide my internal 3.5" HHD into place — a much better alternative to divorcing the heat sink from the CPU and fowling the thermal compound joining the two. I was installing a retail box CPU (which comes with a heat sink, as opposed to an OEM box CPU which doesn't).If you're thinking, "Why didn't you just install your HDDs first, and afterwards install the motherboard (with CPU, CPU heat sink, and RAM)?" I actually tried that first, and it doesn't work. :) Again, it's that tight a squeeze.Space for cable management is limited, unless you keep the external 3.5" drive bay empty (which is part of the 5.25" bays' "box"), in which case you can access a modest pass-through from the 5.25" bays' box to the empty space on the far side of the 3.5" bays' box. This pass-through is large enough to accept even the motherboard main power cable.Oh, and don't forget to have a flashlight handy. The black interior of the case can make it difficult to see what you're doing.After all this trouble, why give the Cougar MG100 mini tower case 5 stars? Well personally I find the actual assembly of a system to be half the fun. And after all my crawling around inside this case, never once did I encounter a sharp edge or a misthreaded mounting hole. Also, this is my second Cougar case. The first one is a COUGAR Solution C400SL, a mid-tower in a higher price bracket. While the comparative quality between the two is noticeable, I remain quite impressed by this little "cheapy" case. Totally worth the extra US$5 I paid for this case over other considerations to get the front USB 3.0 port too.Hope this helps.

Over all a good case that will do just what is needed. The metal use could be a little thicker and the leds could be a bit brighter.

The case is working really well. The tool-less drive mounts are nice.

Nice quality low cost mini tower case that works well with mATX motherboards. I have used this case for about 15 basic PC builds. The front mounted USB 3 port is a nice feature.