Over the Xmas period I decided to get to the bottom of what was rubbing against my front fan of the case I have had since September 2009. In the process I had to remove the mesh covering by bending all the little tabs that held the dust filter in place (not designed to be user replaceable) and of course managed to break a few of those tabs.

In breaking things I was never able to get to the bottom of the issue and so rather than putting it all back together again, I used good old tape to roughly place the dust filter in front of the fan to act as a small barrier from touching the front fan as it spins.

For a long time I have had a rule at home that only I clean the computer, with my modifications this was more important than ever. However someone decided to break the rule and sucked up the dust filter into the vacuum cleaner shredding it ...

As a result I am now looking for a case and the selection out there is well, confusing.
I have one optical drive, two 3 1/2 inch drives and one SSD in the machine
Four front USB ports would be good along with headphone jack.
Graphics card is normal size so I do not need special consideration (although I am looking at also needing to replace it - GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB which is over 6 years old)

Tool less hard drive access and thumb screws would be desirable ...

In the back of my mind however I wish to try and remove the excessive amount of dust having a large computer in my room tends to create and not deal with the hassle of transplanting current motherboard and accessories into a new case which has me looking at a desktop replacement laptop (one that can also be used as a laptop when required) ...