Back when I built my first PC, the variety of enclosures was pretty limited. We had two colors to choose from; ivory and beige. In the style department we had the full-tower, mid-tower, and the desktop. The Desktop was probably the most popular case design at that time. All of the front bezels resembled  a cardboard box, and cooling options were almost non-existent. 

     Obviously, those days are LONG gone. Picking the enclosure that is right for you could mean spending a lot of time flipping through the near countless web pages or walking through the rows of a few PC stores.

     Even companies like Voodoo and Falcon Northwest have added case options to their gaming system builds. It has helped to set their machines apart from all the other cookie-cutter, so-called high end PC's. In short, the enclosure can give a PC attitude.... The hardware inside may be cutting edge, but even with a windowed side-panel - you only see so much.

     Sunbeam's specialty has been in the case-mod scene, so I wouldn't expect an enclosure to come from them that was plain in any way. This is one they call The Quarterback. It's an enclosure from their ATX mid-tower line-up and is aimed at the mainstream market. With a $55 price tag, it certainly won't put you behind on the mortgage.

     Its features list is what I expect to see from an enclosure in this bracket. We start with the SECC chassis that will tip the scales at a little over 20 pounds. The outside panels are constructed of aluminum and the front bezel is mostly plastic. Down to the thumb-screws on the side panels, the case uses a tool-free design for installing drives and add-in cards. 

     The front panel consists of two USB ports and two 1/8" inch audio jacks which have been color coded for microphone and headphone use. From the front we have access to all five of the 5.25" drive bays and two of the 3.5" 'floppy' bays. That leaves three more 3.5" drive bays inside.

 The Quarterback is one of the enclosures that Sunbeam has added a little extra cooling too.....

     They call it the Core-Fan design.  Basically, there is a rail that attaches to the frame of the chassis at about the mid-way point from front to back. The rail has holes strategically placed in it to allow fans to be mounted to it. We'll get into Core Fan system in more detail shortly.