My friend bought a small shuttle case... its kinda like an elongated cube and has had nothing but problems with it... both the power and reset button broke off within a week, the only processor cooler he could fit in it was the stock intel cooler because there was very little room(and because of the socket 778) The case was so small that the ambient temp of the case sits at above 55 celcius, and his motherboard died after a month and it took the shuttle 6 weeks to return it to him... so that has steered me away from that option.
The cases are just to small to allow airflow through the computer unless you start cutting the case and putting some 80mm case fans in it or something like that. And you become severly limited on what prehiperals you can put in the case... for example the leadtec 6600gt is a small size card and it barley fits in the case. My huge MSI 5900 is over half the length of the case.
I agree that the aluminum cases are cheaply built, but i am really conserned with the weight of the case. some of the steel mid towers are light too... i just havent found one that i like, they all have some stupid plastic on the front that make them look like transformers or something.
