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Five More Mainstream Gaming Cases, Rounded-Up

Five More Mainstream Gaming Cases, Rounded-Up
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We've already given you a pictorial walk-through of cases six through 10 of our 15-chassis round-up. Today, we build PCs inside of them, evaluate their value, and pick one as the most likely to satisfy your needs (though several excel in other ways).

A few small requirements narrowed a field of over fifty mainstream cases to just fifteen, but even an in-depth look at that subset would have taken us a full month to complete. Rather than tackling a 15-case round-up, we broke the samples into three groups of five.

But that presented a new conundrum: in what order should we present the contenders? The easiest solution was to create groups of five enclosures based on when each brand delivered its first sample. Second samples will show up in the third round-up.

Now, you'd think that our almost completely random selection would result in an equally random set of features in each five-way comparison. So far, though, each story has only seen one stand-out design. We already saw these features individually, and here’s how they compare:

  Antec
Eleven Hundred
Cooler Master
Storm Enforcer
Fractal Design
Arc Midi
Raidmax
Agusta
SilverStone
Kublai KL04
Dimensions
Height20.7"19.0"18.7"23.8"19.3"
Width9.3"9.0"9.3"9.3"8.4"
Depth21.7"20.8"21.6"21.7"19.8"
Space Above
Motherboard
1.2" to 2.2"****1.6"0.6" to 1.6"****0.2" to 0.8"****1.6" to 2.6"****
Card Length13.8"11.1" to 16.6"^^11.7" to 17.8"**16.9"17.3"^^^ to 18.1"^^
Weight20.0 Pounds19.0 Pounds23.1 Pounds17.7 Pounds18.5 Pounds
Cooling
Front Fans
(alternatives)
None
(2 x 120 mm)
1 x 200 mm
(2 x 120 mm)
1 x 140 mm
(2 x 140 mm)
1 x 120 mm, 1 x 80 mm
(None)
None
(None)
Rear Fans
(alternatives)
1 x 120 mm
(None)
1 x 120 mm
(None)
1 x 140 mm
(1 x 120 mm)
1 x 120 mm, 2 x 80 mm
(3 x 80 mm)
1 x 120 mm
(2 x 120 mm)
Top Fans
(alternatives)
1 x 200 mm
(None)
None
(200 mm, 2 x 120 mm)
1 x 140 mm (1 x 180 mm,
3 x 140/120 mm)
2 x 120 mm
(None)
1 x 120 mm (2 x 120 mm, 1 x 140 mm)
Left Side
(alternatives)
None
(2 x 120 mm)
None
(None)
None
(2 x 180/140 mm)
None
(1 x 180/120 mm)
None
(None)
Right Side
(alternatives)
None
(1 x 120 mm)
None
(None)
None
(None)
None
(None)
1 x 120 mm
(2 x 120 mm)
Drive Bays
5.25" ExternalThreeFourTwoFiveFour
3.5" ExternalNone1 x Adapter1 x AdapterNone1 x Adapter
3.5" InternalSixSixEightSixNine
2.5" InternalTwoTwo + 1 x AdapterEight*Six*Six
Card SlotsNineSeven +1Seven +1SevenEight
Price£90 £70 £70 $120 (UK Price Not Available) £90
*Shared on 3.5" tray **Slots 1-3 ***Slots 2-4 ****w/o Top Fan ^w/o fan bracket ^^w/o Centre Cage ^^^12.5" w/HDD installed


Carnival geeks are a good reminder that standing out isn't always a good thing. Yet, the computer geek in all of us hopes that the most elaborate of these designs can stand up to the performance and quality of its less-flashy rivals. We built a system into each of these cases to find out.

If you missed the first part of this series, or our recent picture-based tour of the five enclosures being evaluated today, then check out the links below:

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