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I gather up my hardware, plop myself on the floor, slap this thing on its side and prepare to go to town. I pull out the motherboard tray, which is nicely seated and held on by two thumb screws, notice the handles, and install the motherboard. The other hardware all installs nicely and nothing seems out of the ordinary. WAIT!! How do I install my CD Burners, my DVD burners, my big honking temp displays!?!? This thing uses rails, but there aren't any in the box? OK, now I am mad! I have every thing sitting on my floor ready to get it on and I can't install an optical drive?!? I hop on the internet, look for their phone number and think to myself, "This can't be true?" I give them another chance and start looking through the box thinking I might have missed something, and of course I did. It wasn't in the box though; they pulled a fast one on me. They hid the rails on the inside of the case on each of the drive bay covers. Nice feature / annoying feature. This seems to be covered in the manual that was somehow not included with my review sample.
 
With all the pieces accounted for, the assembly can take place. The motherboard tray, with its handles, makes things much easier. It removes easily, but reinstalling the tray into the case with a motherboard installed on it can be quite tricky. It seems that they didn't allow enough room to install the tray and motherboard easily because of the exhaust fan location. With a little finagling I was able to re-introduce the tray into the chassis without removing the fan. I would, however, recommend removing the fan first though as it would make the installation much easier. This issue could have easily been solved by make the chassis just a hair longer. If you look closely in the picture, you can see that there is only about the width of the thumbscrew between where the motherboard tray and the non-removable hard drive rack of the chassis. That width is not enough to compensate for the width of the 120mm exhaust fan.
 
After everything is installed, I am actually pleased with the way things worked out. The room provided for the PSU makes for a stress free, scratch-less, installation; this helps to make up for the lack of room they provide for the main board installation, from which I am still twitching. The hard drive rack and provided rails aren't of the highest quality, but they do the job well giving me some wiggle room. As it turns out, the handles for the motherboard tray provide some cabling relief as well!
 
I would have liked to have seen at least a fan guard installed on the exhaust fan. Granted, this fan doesn't induce tornados, but in a chassis that costs over 100.00 they should spend an extra 1.00 and protect my fragile fingers. After all, I do aspire to be, like George Costansa, a hand model. Drive rails seem to be arising as a standard now, but these seem flimsy. I haven't broken one yet, but I do see that coming so be careful because they don't give you any extras.
With all of its features and shortfalls, I really can't say I would send this case out as highly recommended. It seems more like your average chassis farting along. There is nothing that stands out about it, aside from its elegant front bezel. If iStar chose to include some "go the extra mile" features, they could have really changed my opinion on this case. Had they made it aluminum, provided us with higher quality rails, improved the expansion card retention mechanism (Thermaltake still holds the crown there), and made the case a little bit deeper they could have had a contender. Oh, and as far as the Super Cooling you read about in the introduction, phooey, it has 2 120mm fans, what is super cooling about that? I almost forgot to mention… I pressed the reset button the other day, and IT WENT INSIDE THE CASE!!!
Bottom line, would I buy one? Fix some of those things mentioned above and the answer is yes.
Note: After further review, a member of the COD staff (Rbreb13 and his hawk like vision) realized that the 3.5" drive assembly is eerily similar to that of the Antec Sonata. See here: Click Me. I figure, if it will work for Antec, why won't it work here?
JSgolfman's thoughts: My general comments would be that they included a lot of style but not a lot of substance. It has the hip factor down, but aesthetics can only carry you so far. The devil is in the details, as they say. They may seem like minor issues, but it displays a lack of concern for the end user, in my opinion. I've had my Coolermaster ATCs for 3 years now, and it is still the champ in my household. Until they show some improvement on the usability front, they are persona non grata around here.
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