GMC, a Korean company, has been making its mark on the North American PC case market for a short time now. They usually offer cases with plenty of cool features and eye-popping designs. Their first gamer-specific enclosure, the X7 ‘X-Station’ is no different.

It seems as though everyone and their brother is making gaming PC cases these days. These folks put out all manner of crazy designs in an attempt to bait the perspective buyer into purchasing them. Problem is that most of these gaudy cases are nothing more than flash, with poor cooling and no useful features to speak of. Thankfully, the X7 is not one of them.

The X7 is designed with militaristic-looking black lines which lend themselves well to the gamer-centric motif. It actually reminds me of something you would see in Batman’s ‘Tumbler Batmobile’. The bezel features a couple of cool orange power lights as well as four USB 2.0 ports, power button, and reset button. We would like to have seen an eSATA and/or FireWire port on the front, but we digress. The X-7 also features a backlit LCD display which shows the case temperature and fan speed.

Speaking of fans, the case features three of them: One 120mm fan in the aft, an 80mm fan in the fore, and an 80mm fan in the side panel. The side panel doesn’t feature a window, but instead a cool protruding, vented area with a button to change fan speeds. These provide decent airflow, but if you are overclocking I would recommend modding out the side fan with a 120mm unit using an adapter. Inside the case, there is just enough room to accommodate a gtx 280 video card, making cabling somewhat of a challenge. This is not out of the ordinary though, as most cases have issues in this department.

The case has bays for four 5.25” drives, three of which are protected by an easy-open drive cover in the bezel. Instead of removing your case’s plastic drive bay cover and potentially losing it (I do this a lot), these swing open to the side, staying attached to the case. Once installed, the cover swings back into place, covering your drive with its cool Batmobile-esque design. The top-most drive bay does not feature one of these covers, but instead has been designed to house a CD/DVD-ROM drive. This particular bay has rounded corners and allows for easy access to your drive. The easy-access covers are removable, however, should you have a second disc media drive to install. The case allows for up to four 3.5” drives to be installed, right behind the 80mm forward area fan to promote hard disk cooling.

Overall, the X7 ‘X-Station’ is a fine mid-level gaming enclosure that balances form and function. While its fan system may not be the most optimal for overclocking your gear, its cool extra features make up for that in spades.