One of the most pleasant things about recent years in computer design is that the beige box keeps being slaughtered and, although it keeps coming back once in a while, I could say that it’s on the way to extinction – and that’s a good thing. MGE is one of the forerunners in this massacre of the beige box, and has been putting out radically designed cases for some time; the MGE Viper 2 is the latest addition to these, and it lives up to MGE’s reputation of building cases with a pretty distinct look.

The case follows the typical case design format: front door, removable side panel, front/rear fan vents and side door air intake. The case is tool-less, which is a very welcome addition; hard drives and CD-ROMs mount on rails, though they aren’t vibration-proof like the ones on the Antec cases. On the front is an LCD display, similar to the Dragon case we reviewed last year, though this time it’s red instead of blue, to match the color of the case. Overall, the design of the case is very well done – the fan colors match the case, as does the LCD, presenting a unified image.

A good feature is the front ports, but the downside of it is that it takes up a 3 ½” drive bay: if you, say, needed 2 floppy drives, you would not be able to do it. Another good feature is the side air vent: but the downside (and I consistently complain about this in every case review that I write, but there just seems to be no interest in this – I am unclear why) is the lack of proper air routing towards a CPU. You see, for me, even more important than the case temperature is the CPU temperature. As a general rule, with sufficient fans (and the Viper supports 120mm fans, so if you put a pair of Vantec Stealth fans, you should be well on your way to a quiet and well-cooled system), you can keep the case temperature reasonable. CPU temperature is much harder to control, however. Either you mount a large, loud fan on it, or you have to come up with inventive solutions. As an example, the current everyday case that I use is an ugly old beige box, made in the days when they used steel to make cases. I didn’t really care about the well-being of the case, so I Dremel’ed a round hole in the side, creating my own air vent. Then I attached a Vantec Stealth 120mm on the outside, and cut up a 1.5L bottle of Sprite to create a plastic air duct. Sure, it’s not the most aesthetically pleasing solution (and I sure wouldn’t want a Plexiglas window into the case), but the result is that when the ambient temperature in the room is 30 degrees, my Athlon64 3000+ CPU runs at 41. With a stock AMD heatsink, and with the fan removed from it. I think that is very reasonable. With the Viper, I wasn’t able to reach low temperatures like that: my CPU hovered in the mid-50s, going up to 60 under load. This isn’t out of spec, but it’s outside my comfort zone: I will have to build a proper air conduit and mount a better fan. The side window doesn’t have enough area to mount a 120mm fan properly, but with a Dremel and a file, I should be able to make a pretty circular opening, and that will help the situation a lot, and I can go back to my single-fan solution.

Besides that, I liked the case. I kind of wanted the door to be something space-age (maybe like on the Asus Vento, or even something with a button and pneumatic arms so it looks like a space-ship airlock door), but that’s excessive. As it stands, it’s a very solid case, and well worth it for the LAN gamer who needs a flashy unit. The coupon book included with the case has discount offers for UV lighting kits, which could improve the looks even more; and with a air conduit mod to cool the CPU, this case will stand up quite well to the competition.