Review on 🖥️ Zalman S3 ATX Mid Tower PC Case: Smoky Acrylic Side Panel, Three 120mm Fans, Patterned Mesh Design, Black by Vic Alexander

I bought this product because I thought there would be a decent flow of air through the side vents on the front. I was wrong. There's a plastic wall that blocks your view of the vents, so you can't see the front fans. The gap between this wall and the case, through which the air has to get to the fans, is very narrow. I used Microsoft's best technical charting program to sketch what I'm talking about. The red arrows indicate the limitation. Now, if you just stick with the two included front fans, the top two fans pull in air through the open bottom vent, so it feels like they're blowing out a lot of air. . In reality, however, they simply circulate the air in the case. This is particularly noticeable if you install a third front fan or, like me, install new fans in all three front slots. With three good fans in the front with the front panel in place and the top vent blocked, the rear fan pulls little to no air from the case. That's because the only good fresh air intake (with the top vent blocked) is the vent on the bottom of the case. When I remove the front panel to allow all 3 front fans to have unobstructed airflow, so much air is blown out the back of the case that it looks like it's starting to come off the table! Then when I put the front cover back on you can literally feel the cover being pulled into the fans and you can hear the airflow stop as the front fans start fighting for air. As that's my only major complaint I'll leave it, but I have to cut out the bottom of the front cover and drill holes along this front vent to open airflow. Other minor complaints, mostly found in other reviews, mention Molex fan headers (you can't control the speed of the standard front fans), thin build material, and no clearance for cable management. As I said, I replaced all 3 front fans so the Molex fans aren't a big deal. The thin build material just means you have to be careful when tightening the screws to avoid cutting holes (and it's unlikely to survive a fall off a table, but ideally it never will). Cable management isn't great, but it's good enough. It just takes a little more thought to route the cables so that the side panel can be mounted. The soft pad that runs under the side panel was built in rather poorly (i.e. not very straight), but. meh. I have a tempered glass side panel that is really good. I love that it comes with rubber plugs for the top I/O ports (2xUSB, 1xUSB3.0, headphone and microphone jacks). The plastic front cover looks very attractive under brushed aluminum. The legs are pretty high, so you could probably put it on the carpet if you're the sort of monster that would do something like that. It has decent disk mounting options. Overall, I would NOT recommend this case if you plan to use it as is. If you're planning on installing a third fan and you're ok with cutting the front cover off for better airflow, you can (probably) do worse. The S2 might not look as good as the S3 (subjectively), but it's definitely the best option for airflow.