External Looks

The GMC C-50 is a beautiful case. At first glance, the case is a shiny black that you can easily see your reflection in. The front bezel has a curious curve to it, something I don't think photos do justice for. The CD-ROM bay lies behind a silver-trimmed door, ensuring that the appearance of your case isn't hindered by an optical drive of another color. The power and reset buttons of this case are probably the best buttons I've ever seen come default on a case. The power button is surrounded by a red rim, which presumably lights up when power is applied. Both buttons are highlighted with a silver trim, much like the optical drive bay, and both feel very secure and firm when pressing. These aren't buttons you can simply bump.


At the bottom of the front panel there is a door that folds down to review 4 USB Ports, audio-out, and microphone-in ports. There's also a spot for an optional Firewire port, but ours didn't come fitted with one. The USB Ports are rather close together, so I couldn't expect to be able to plug 4 flash drives in at the same time.


On the rear, we can see everything we'd expect to see: Rear exhaust fan, motherboard & pci slots, and a powerplug. The part that sticks out is the lack of a powersupply. Don't be fooled, it's not a small form factor powersupply. The powersupply, in fact, is at the front of the C-50, but a power cable runs to the rear. Slick stuff, isn't it?


The panel that comes off to reveal the motherboard tray is fitted with three separate vents. This is something you may not necessarily find in other cases. One of the vents is an air duct for the CPU, while the one directly below it is over where your PCI cards are; you've got to have ventilation for the latest videocards. The last vent, near the front of the case, is the oddest. Normally, your harddrives are around this location. In the case of the C-50, this is where your powersupply resides. This vent is for powersupplies that have fans on their underside.