Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsThe Near-Perfect Quality Powerhouse
Reviewed in the United States on July 14, 2016
I've never had a "real" PC case before.
I bought a then-$75 MSI Ravager case that had a lot of plastic and poor design choices. I didn't have the experience of a $100 Enthoo Pro, $110 NZXT H440, $120 Corsair 750D, or any $150 case prior to this purchase, so I can't provide a comparison for price-to-quality. But when it comes to quality on this case, this is the epitome. There is very little plastic in this case, spare the HDD sliding racks. The panels that aren't the beautiful tempered glass are strong, powder-blasted (correct me if I'm wrong?) aluminum segments that feel suspiciously well-made for aluminum compared to aluminum faces from other cases I've came into contact with.
The interior. I'll say it straight out of the gate: the only major problem I've had during installation is that with a H110i GT (or any liquid cooler for that matter), even with the slide-in radiator panel and despite any mounting methods, the radiator panel will have to be slid out in order to access the top 1.5-2 inches of the motherboard. Luckily it didn't actually interfere with the heatsinks on my MSI X99S SLI Plus, but it just doesn't look neat with the radiator (or fans, whichever way you prefer either to show) covering the entire top 2 inches of my motherboard. You may say, "just mount the fans on the top of the radiator panel once it's slid in," but (A) that completely defeats the purpose of having the sliding panel, and (B) doing so would require yanking a secondary top panel out of the mounting clips for the main top panel, and when I tried pulling it out with all of my force, I felt like I was going to break the clips. Maybe some other users have been able to do what I've tried to do, but I don't feel like trying to break my $200 case on day one. I almost felt like it would be required to give this a 4-star rating because of the workarounds I had to implement, but I feel that what I tried to do is the solution, but I just need to pull harder and not worry about breaking the case (lol).
Other interior stuff: ATX motherboard fits snugly. Cable mounting holes are placed well. PWM hub works great. Cable routing was a bit difficult with my non-modular GS600, but was still fairly easy and came up pretty neat in the end with a bit of effort. No problems at all for clearance for my graphics card (EVGA 780 Ti SC ACX) or the H110i GT Radiator besides what was mentioned above. Mounting my Samsung 850 EVO 500GB in the front location was weird because with the label sitting correctly, the connections go to the front side of the case rather than where the cable routing holes are; luckily, I was able to unscrew the bottom front fan, run the cables through the HDD cage, and remount the fan, no issues. I only mounted the one SSD, so I don't have experience with the included HDD mounts (nor the included custom watercooling pump mount), which seemed pretty well-built. Overall very stellar-built interior as well.
As for the exterior: the panels are fingerprint magnets, as expected. I don't know off the top of my head what the recommended cleaner is for these, but I'd keep some on hand after the initial build if you aren't careful with handling. The mounting for the panels is very easy and well-designed in my opinion. The glass panels require a bit more care than the aluminum ones obviously, but it's not too difficult to mount and remount once you get the jist of it. It's probably for the best to not have the hinge mechanism for these, as during the build process, you may bump the dangling glass panels and cause some issues compared to the standard Evolv ATX build procedure. The RGB I/O is pretty limited with color selection, but looks very clean when you find the right color. I will be buying the strip for this to see how the colors behave with my motherboard's blue lighting. Front I/O itself feels well-built, and the little flap is part of the front aluminum panel, so no plastic here.
TL;DR: Very little plastic. Easy to install despite some clearance hiccups. Looks VERY CLEAN in the end if you don't get too grab-happy with the panels.
Very satisfied with this case even for the price. Be wary of price jumps above the double-hundo and you should be fine. Cheers!
