After buying a bunch of cheaper cases which didn’t work out for me because of a lack of width for tower coolers to keep my AMD FX8350 chip cool; I went ahead and bought myself a Coolermaster HAF912 mid tower case for $60 which after seven months I am still very happy with overall.
The HAF912 comes with six 3.5in internal hard disk cages, four of which can be removed for better airflow with a single 2.5in adapter for a solid state drive, three 5.25in drive bays, one 3.5in drive bay; all with black mesh front panels, two USB2 ports, headphone and microphone inputs.
There are plenty of cooling options in this case, as standard the case comes with two Coolermaster A12025-12CB-3BN-F1 120mm case fans, front and rear with mounts for two 120mm or one 200mm at the front and top, 120mm or 140mm on the side panel and 120mm at the rear. I have opted for 2 x 200mm, 1 x 140mm and 1 x 120mm fans which creates great airflow over my Coolermaster Hyper 212 Evo tower cooler; which in turn keeps my AMD FX8350 under 40°C at the core under full load.
Behind the ATX motherboard tray there is plenty of space to hide all your cables with plenty of tie down points for all your cable management without too much difficulty replacing the side panel.
Remembering this is a $60 case; there is an issue; to get access to the dust filter, both side panels need to be removed to pop off the front panel. I don’t understand why Coolermaster elected to not allow the front panel to be popped off without removing the side panels. I don’t expect a slide out dust filter in a $60 case, but cheaper cases have pop off front panels, seems like a silly omission!
Personally I believe this is the best budget mid tower case you can buy at this time, it offers all the features you need and allows for tall CPU tower coolers with a case width of 230mm, which easily fits a 160mm tall heatsink with side panel fan installed. One downside for some is the lack of USB3 connectivity but for me that isn’t an issue as my motherboard has no USB3 front panel connectivity and I don’t have any USB3 devices to use with it; which is probably the case for most people.