The festive looking traffic signal below is actually the XCLIO 1000 case. Airflow should be well taken care of inside this case considering it has EIGHT 180mm fans, but it comes at the expense of one ugly creation. We all know that red means stop and green means go... But what does blue mean? What happened to yellow? Once past the three fans up front, there are five more to consider, and they all seem to have been after thoughts with their clear plastic grills and pale pastel LEDs. They wouldn't look right on the case even without such a colorful view up front, but the lack of a theme definitely adds to the ugliness.



The next ugly case is another one that wins for a whole class of cases... Acrylic cases were a novel new idea several years ago, but they were never attractive. If you have an amazing talent for cable management and have some of the best components in the world, it may work... Otherwise these cases just let everyone see your dusty junk. On top of that, they're prone to damage, and the inevitable cracks and scratches will do nothing for the ugly factor.



I was on the fence about adding the final case to the list... I think it is ugly, but I know a great deal of people think it is a revolutionary work of art. I'm not sure that term can't mean ugly anyway, and with a quick survey enough people agreed with me, and it was added. Some agreed it was definitely ugly, while others said it was OK until they realized that it sells for about $700! Appropriately enough the Thermaltake Level 10 is ugly case number 10. Being different doesn't necessarily mean ugly - but then again sometimes it does. The system components are compartmentalized in their own enclosures attached to a big board, while the motherboard resides in the largest of these compartment - which looks like it could be a case all by itself.



If you own an ugly case, just remember that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", or some other sappy expression that might make you feel better. We'd love to hear your suggestions on other ugly cases, or your defense of any case that made the list. Please feel free to post in this forum thread to share your opinion. And I suppose we should thank Xoxide.com for having so many of these cases available under one roof. While you can find most from a variety of other online retailers, there is a peculiarly high concentration of them over there!

Please drop by the Bigbruin.com Forum and feel free to post any comments or questions.