Got a link to the GMC site from my good buddy Darksiege. A very nice variety of cases including one that I just fell in love with the look of: the Noblesse. The specs on it looked pretty damned sweet as well. I contacted the nice folks at GMC to see if they'd be willing to send me a case for demo and review purposes and they did, so here we are. Click any image in the review to expand it.

Construction

As you can see the Noblesse is a Midtower ATX. Side panels are removable, and have thumbscrews on the rear of the case (2 per panel.) Construction is heavy guage steel, a little bit thicker than that on a standard Enlight mid tower. Side panels have multiple hooks on the upper edge, and a rail on the lower that slides over the bottom inner edge of the case. There are plastic runners on the upper inside edge, likely to prevent vibration. The case has spots for 4 8cm fans with two on the front, blowing across the lower 3.5" inner bays and two on the rear, just below the power supply.

There are 11 drive bays in this bad boy, 3 external 5.25", 2 external 3.5", 1 external 5.25" w. sliding cover down at the bottom of the case, and a whopping 5 internal 3.25" drive bays. My RAID array has never had more room to breathe (and expand. Heh Heh.) than it has in this case. In my old Enlight I had exactly 0 drive bays free after all my storage crap was crammed in there. (DVD,CD-RW, Floppy, 4x hard drives) I'm not quite sure what I'll do with all these tasty bays I have free. Perhaps fill them with cream or something. Or maybe I'll just enjoy the space.

The front bezel of the Noblesse case is most interesting, with a magnetically secured door and a sweet looking mirrored piece of plastic in the front. When I recieved the case, the mirror was in the bottom of the box , having come loose during transport. Behind the mirror, rather than a flat surface for the adhesive to bond to, is a series of triangles. The only reason I can think of for this design is that they were originally planning on having the case that way, and someone slapped on the mirror and decided to go with it. Put a flat surface under that little mirror, and I doubt that it would have come off during shipping.

One of my major issues with any case with a hinged front door is CD-RW friendliness. Many drives, when they complete a burn actually eject the drive tray. Door closed? I've had a few customers destroy their drives by closing the door. The damned thing ejects and... clickclickclickclick*snap*

Not going to happen with the Noblesse. If you leave the front door closed, and a drive ejects... The door opens (ahh blessed magnets.) and no harm is done. Very slick, and there's no catch to break or wear out. On the down side, the magent isn't very strong, and the door tends to open while you're carrying the case around... So you do have to watch that. I would have prefered a slightly more powerful magnet, but you can't have everything in life. ;) If you don't like the front door, the case comes with an extra little cover. Remove the door, snap the cover onto the hinges. No door, and the case still looks great.

The motherboard is secured to the backing plate with six non-removable (well, more on that in a sec.) steel studs. Slap the motherboard onto the studs, in go six screws and you're good-to-go. Very, very easy and fast...... Unless you happen to have a motherboard that doesn't fit quite right. My A7A266 fits fine. My A7V266 doesn't have the middle hole near the bottom of the board..... So it was "grab a pair of pliers and remove the "non removable" mounting stud. I honestly prefer a series of threaded screw holes in the backing plate. If you had a normal board though, with the six holes the install would be a snap. I'd also prefer a removable motherboard tray, although a riveted in tray does promote stiffness in the case in my opinion.... And realistically, you don't change your motherboard all time anyway. :)

Fit and finish overall are excellent. Everything is very tight on the case, and even the holes for the fan screws are a little bit bigger than the screws, so it's no issue getting them in. (On many cases you have to thread the damned screws into the holes, then into the fan... major annoyance and time waster.) I've also noticed that the cut outs in the rear of the case for the exhaust fans are not the normal little grille design. They're shaped more like a daisy. The airflow coming out of the case is MOST impressive. Clearly the guys who designed this case sat down and thought about it. I would have liked a lock on the front bezel, there is a padlock on the left side panel to prevent people messing about with your gear.