Labs

Most of the Elite 330's front consists of a black metal grille that helps to keep the interior of the case cool. The ports are positioned on the front, but there's no FireWire or eSATA port for fast external hard disks.

A pair of thumbscrews hold the side panel in place. This has two vents cut into it, one of which is attached to a duct that points towards your processor fan. You can replace this with an 80mm fan if necessary. A single 120mm fan at the rear of the case expels hot air. It's quiet and can plug into a motherboard fan header.

The drive bays are tool-free, with plastic clips that lock into the bay and hold the drive in place. You have to punch out rather than unscrew the metal blanking plates to fit expansion plates at the rear, so you can't refit them if you remove a card in the future.

The Elite 330 is a reasonable budget case, but Gigabyte's GZ-X1 costs only £1 more, has a FireWire port and better cooling.