****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
At a glance, it’s obvious that this case is a rebrand of an older preexisting case design. The case has mounting points for two optical drives, but the optical drive bays have been covered with the front mesh panel. That’s not to say it’s a bad case, as it certainly isn’t, but this isn’t the first name this case has been sold under.Looking closer, this case is the same case as the darkFlash Phantom case with different fans and a mesh front, metal right side panel, and glass left panel instead of all 3 panels being glass. Overall, I consider this a significant improvement. A glass right panel only serves to show how bad of a job you did at cable management, and a glass front chokes off airflow. In most cases a mesh front lets plenty of light through while having far better airflow.This case is pretty tall. When I say tall, I mean at 21” tall this is one of the tallest cases I’ve worked with that isn’t actually a full tower. The case has a now standard tempered glass side panel and power supply shroud, as well as pretty generic front I/O with two USB 2 ports and one USB 3 port, but is made a little more interesting by the presence of the RGB button. The case includes a preinstalled RGB hub that cycles through a number of preset patterns when you press the button, and when you press and hold the button for a few seconds it can sync to a motherboard header. The case also came with 6 ARGB fans with 8 LEDs per fan connected to the controller, which is a huge plus.The included fans use the standard 3 pin ARGB connector, and have a 3 pin fan connector with an optional molex power connector dangling off. I personally would have preferred if they didn’t even have the dangling molex power connector, as they just get in the way. Both the ARGB and 3 pin fan power cable on each fan comes plugged into the hub anyway, and the hub has no fan speed control, making it somewhat redundant anyway. The lack of fan speed control is slightly annoying, as the fans spinning at full speed aren’t especially quiet. They aren’t loud enough to be a real problem, but they’re still noticeable background noise. Food for thought if you’re obsessive about noise or wear open back headphones, as this could be a potential deal-breaker for some people.Cable management in this case is an interesting discussion. The case has vertical cable management holes on the right side of the motherboard tray, but the placement seems to have been designed around a non-existent mini-ATX spec. Any ATX or micro-ATX motherboard will cover these holes, and they are only really usable with a mini-itx motherboard. While these management holes being unusable is obnoxious, the case also has two horizontal slots between the 2.5” drives that are usable for the necessary cable management. It’s also worth noting that some of the case pictures on the listing show rubber grommets on the cable routing holes above and below the motherboard, but my case didn’t include the rubber grommets. I can see rubber grommets visible in a review left by Jeff He, so it might be hit or miss on if your case has them or not. The cable management slots above and below the motherboard are centered instead of being placed at the top left/right corners, so you may have more cable visible than you might like.Moving on to the back of the motherboard tray, there isn’t a whole lot to speak of when it comes to cable management. The case has a bunch of points to zip-tie your cables, but the cables on the preinstalled fans are just barely long enough to connect to the hub, and cannot be managed with normal cable management techniques. If you’re using the included fans and RGB hub, your cable management isn’t going to be pretty no matter what you do. You definitely can improve it, but there’s a limit to how much you can do.Speaking of the fans, the case also has space for 5 more fans to be installed with 3 mounting points at the bottom on the power supply shroud, and two on the top. The top points support a pair of 120mm or 140mm fans, making it the ideal location for a 240mm or 280mm AIO cooler. There’s plenty of space above the top of the motherboard, leaving ample space to fit almost any radiator in a push/pull configuration. There’s also a magnetic dust filter on top, but that’s mostly cosmetic since anybody that puts fans there should be configuring them as exhaust fans. There’s also a small cutout at the end of the top fan mounts. While I’m not sure what the intended purpose is, I suppose you could use it for installing the pull fans in a push pull configuration outside the case, or routing random peripheral cables into the case? It’s strange, but an incredibly minor detail. On the other hand, there isn’t too much to say about the bottom fan mounting points on the power supply shroud. The case comes with long screws to install fans on the bottom similar to mounting fans to mounting points on a radiator. These screw holes weren’t properly bottom tapped on my case, and I had to finish tapping them with the screws when I tried to install a spare fan at the bottom. If you intend to use these, you should try installing and removing the screws in these holes before building in the case, as it takes a bit more force to screw them in when finishing tapping them, and there’s a chance you have a bit of metal dust come out from putting the screws in to open up the holes. Also, don’t install your GPU until after you put these fans in, and route your motherboard front I/O cables before installing the bottom fans. You’re in for a bad time if you don’t.While it doesn’t detract from the product itself at all, I just want to say that the included manual is pretty useless. It’s just a single sided sheet of paper showing the parts in the case, how to remove the panels, where the motherboard goes, and where the video card goes. The included slip of paper doesn’t really cut it as a manual. That said, it’s not necessary in the slightest when building a computer. Case manuals are something nice to have, not something needed.Overall, this case has its quirks. I personally don’t care for the cable management hole locations in this case. However, this case has its merits. It has a bunch of space at the top for a liquid cooler in a push/pull configuration, and it comes with 6 ARGB fans. While the fans might not seem to be a big deal, I personally feel that it makes a big difference. If you were to buy a computer case without any fans and went to buy ARGB fans, the cheapest ARGB fans available typically cost about $25 for a three pack. Because of that, I think of the case as a large $50 budget case with $50 worth of preinstalled fans and a bonus RGB hub as part of the case. Taking that into consideration, this isn’t a bad budget option if you have your heart set on going full RGB while not breaking the bank.
