Introduction:

Whereas Apple has been doing it for years, the importance of well designed ATX housing became of real interest only since few years back. A new rage appeared on the web, people were making the coolest looking pc cases out of average kitchen stuff. Quickly some manufacturers jumped into this business, seems like the community really is interested in well designed 'puters after all. The evolution of office machines into central media players surely begged the question if we couldn't get better looking housings, no one wants those silly old brown-white boxes standing next to their wide-screen television. Nowadays, I can't think of ever buying the traditional PC case from 10 years back, not with so many great looking products for nearly the same price, not even mentioning the greatly improved set of features.

Today we have a look at Gigabyte's 3D Mercury PC housing, a full ATX tower case which comes with a pre-installed water-cooling circuit. 2 available colors, we got the silver one:



Specifications:



First Impressions :



Both the body and the side panels are made from the same brushed aluminum. Aluminum is an excellent choice regarding the pc housing, it does not only improve the overall case cooling, and it also makes the case easier to carry around than the classic steel housings. The total weight of this case surpasses 10kg, I'm sure the water-cooling circuit has quite a big deal in this. The size of this case, it is a full tower, is big compared with what most people have been using in their everyday life. Inside we found much space, the pre-installed water loop doesn't really bother you during installation of computer parts and components, even the 10 inch long 8800 GTX will fit in there without issues.



Storing all your precious data on hard disks is no problem as Gigabyte managed to find space for 7x 3.5" hard disks. You can also install up to 4 (HD)-DVD, CD, or blue-ray drives. Extra features like front audio, USB, FireWire is a must these days, Gigabyte installed those on an easy accessible place, but we'll go deeper into this later on. On first sight I'm pleased with the overall look, maybe a bit tall for my own likings but still a very good looking quality build.