Chieftec DX-01 mid tower

The Chieftec DX-01 (Dragon) mid tower is an excellent chassis. I bought three of these five or six years ago and have never really found any reasons to be unhappy with them. It's an ATX chassis, capable housing full-sized motherboards of this format (305 x 244 mm). I actually bought them at a time when the industry was threatening to replace ATX with the BTX form factor, which would have made my chassis obsolete the next time I bought new motherboards, but luckily BTX never really took over.

This chassis has four 5.25" drive bays that can all be accessed externally. Situated below these bays are two removable subchassis, locked in place with sturdy latch mechanisms, that can each accommodate a maximum of three 3.5" devices. The upper one is aligned with two openings for external access and was undoubtedly designed with things like floppy disk drives in mind. So far, this is all that I've ever used them for. The lower removable subchassis is an excellent location to place hard disks, as it also has an 80 mm fan mount in front that allows cool air to be sucked in through the front of the chassis and blown back over the hard disks. Heavy duty 19" systems found in server rooms work according to the same solution and I'm surprised and disappointed that more chassis meant for the SoHo market are not designed this way. Hard disks wear out faster due to excessive heat, so efforts to keep them cooled properly should never be compromised.

At least three more 80 mm fans can be placed in the Chieftec DX-01 chassis: one more in the front, below the lower removable subchassis, to suck fresh air into the chassisto and ensure air-flow over the lower part of the vertically-mounted motherboard, and two more in the back to exhaust warm air out of the chassis. Although two of the Chieftec DX-01 chassis I use also have a fan mounted on the left-side main access pannel, I've never made use of this. This was obviously designed to blow cool air onto hot, high-performance graphics controllers, but I'm happy with the cooler, cheaper versions and consider it awkward to have to contend with a wire attached to such an important removable panel.