Ooo nice spots CAT I'd forgotten about the Ace Ecco 250 which is basically the same as core 1000 inside but with added sound damping material and a 2nd hdd strut
The Zalman's looks interesting, very narrow so cooler height is going to be rather limited but nice idea to make it taller to fit 120mm fan in the top.
@bonebreaker777, As too "Quoting user reviews" I hate to say it but these are often written by idiots who have not bothered to spend any time to understand the workings of a product they have bought.
eg "Getting to some screws was difficult. Also 1 of the screw holes would not line up with a corsair power supply" this instantly says to me that the person was trying to fit the psu in upside down, as psu's have standard screw hole positions and dimensions.
Some cases have mounting holes to fit a psu ether way up but not that many do esp the cheaper cases, and any time you put the psu in the wrong way up one screw hole will not be in the correct place.
Only having the psu held in by 3 screws is not a problem however air flow could well be an issue as there is probably not enough space for air to get to the psu fan.
Cableing will be slightly tricky it always will be in a small case, again it's a matter of understanding how to go about wire in a case with this layout.
You cannot stuff cable behind the motherboard tray or drive cage, what you can do is tie up and put unused psu cables into an empty slot in the 5.25" bay which will hide them/get them out of the way. other cables you need to run the the front and secure them to the inside of the front panel, down the panel then back to the motherboard.
Not the best for cable management but I don't think you'll find any case of the same size and cost to be any better.
Similar situation come with general building a system in it, any case of a similar size is going to have issues, the issues are created by the lack of space more than the design of the case.
here's a great example of how to do good cable management in a core 1000 http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/sh...ostcount=20453
Both the ARC mini and TJ08e/PS07 are bigger esp in width, having a wider case allows for far more options when it come to running cables behind/over and around things.
CPU cooler height is limited to 140mm btw so no 120mm fan based tower cooler will fit in it as they are all around 160mm tall, most 92mm fan based tower will fit no issue eg arctic cooling freezer 7 pro or Cooler Master Hyper TX3 EVO or Thermalright True Spirit90
However all told I do think you'd probably be better off with a small ATX mid tower case The bitfenix mentioned or casecom or silverstone PS02 http://www.scan.co.uk/products/silve...r-case-w-o-psu (older but still a decent case and now cheap) or NZXT source 210 http://www.scan.co.uk/products/nzxt-...mm-fan-w-o-psu
For a general office pc you don't need much in the way of power which in turn means you don't need a great deal of cooling nor any other major requirements.
I would say go with the Ace Ecco 250 or core 1000 if you must have a smaller mATX case, but it doesn't sound like case size is really that big an issue for you, just nothing monstrous, you can still put a mATX motherboard into a ATX case, infact the extra space it will give you will probably make building a little easier.
Look at the dimensions, heck cut up some cardboard boxes make them into boxes of the size of the cases to get a better idea of the size.
You really want small then go for something like this http://www.scan.co.uk/products/inwin...-with-200w-psu now a 200w psu might not sound like much but stick in a h61 miniITX motherboard, an i3 cpu, 4gb ddr ram, single 3.5"HDD and you'll be fine.
The core 3000 is a nice ATX case, but really nothing that special to command the price, nothing really bad or wrong with it, just nothing stands out ether, personally I'd rate the casecom cases over it, the one thing the core 3000 has going for it is the nice fractal design vibration damping hard drive trays.
EDIT: Ok look like the core 3000 price has come down, it used to be £50+


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