AMS gMONO Midtower Case Review

Before we start, I would like to say that this case isn’t very large, in fact its pretty tiny. So if you plan on installing some huge dually motherboards or something in it I think you may run into problems. Now that that’s said, lets see the inside:

As you can see from the picture above, this case does not have removable, well anything. No removable motherboard tray, no removable hard drive bays, nothing. It does have a removable power supply mounting bracket, but I have some qualms with that as you will see later on. The picture on the right is just another pic I had lying around, it just shows the bag of screws and the two thumbscrews that come with the case. Why they only included 2 thumbscrews is beyond me, they should have included at least 4. Why did I not say six? Because the top of the case is riveted to the body, and cannot be removed. This is really troubling to me as a case modding enthusiast, as it makes it difficult to mod this case without taking all the parts out beforehand. It also makes it pretty difficult to get the power supply unit into the case.

Here we can see the fan that comes with the case, which is mounted in the front, where most case manufacturers put their fans. I have a bit of a problem with this. I have no problem with the fan itself, which is fine, but the fact that the fan cannot really bring in much air since the front of the case is made of acrylic, with only a few holes drilled into it for circulation. If you’re gonna use this case, you’re probably gonna have to cut a duct into the front to get sufficient airflow to make a difference.

Okay, the first thing I did when installing components into the case was install the power supply. To do this, I removed the power supply mounting bracket, and attempted to attach it to my Antec 300w power supply unit. To my surprise, it didn’t fit! At all! I tried jimmy rigging it to fit in there, but part of the metal was touching the receptacle for the power cable. Here you can see what I mean:

I had to take a pair of dykes (wire cutters) and make a minor modification so that the PSU would fit. This really should be fixed, and although it is a really minor task to fix, it shouldn’t need to be fixed in the first place. I don’t know how it fits regarding other power supplies, so I can’t really comment on that. Here is a picture of the fixed PSU plate:

Other than the few flaws that I have pointed out already, this case is surprisingly easy to work with. The motherboard fit correctly the first time, and the way they designed the hard drive cages and stuff makes it really easy to hide your wires and cables. It also has 4 full 5.25″ drive bays, which allow for maximum expansion capabilities without purchasing a full tower case.

One other issue I have with this case, although quite minor, is with the I/O backpanel. You can take a look at it here:

While I was trying to punch out the sound input/output holes for the motherboard’s onboard sound, it popped out of the case. It was very, very cheaply made and flimsy, and I had a hard time trying to get it back in as well. I know that its minor, but I want to inform everybody about everything before they drop 50 bucks.