Best PC Cases for 2023 So Far: New Designs & Computex Round-Up
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It would be nice to see more options of those styles & smaller form factors besides those two current cases as large rectangle tower cases are okay but getting old IMO.
While the cube-ish dual chamber style has a bit wider foot print they're shorter and so nice to work on. Plus they look awesome with decent cable management and everything besides the mobo/cpu, gpu, fans hidden away behind the motherboard.
Date: 2023-06-15
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Comments and reviews: 19
Zarky
I love that cooler on the Lian Li Sup 01, thats a neat unit.
The Dubili is one of my favorite new cases announced, it looks super slick.
I'm really liking the montech King 95, its nice to see some light themes and curves like like that in cases again.
I REALLY REALLY hope Deepcool releases that fantastic Teal color they showed on the prototypes, They really should latch onto that color and run with that along with purple, white, and gray.
Thermaltake's Ceres series (lol) is lookin pretty slick too, im liking these new color trends all around.
That Streacom passive case is REALLY cool, but i'll have to admire it from afar, too rich for my blood.
The Fractal Terra excites me in its physical construction, I would love an M-ATX case made in the same method. Maybe available in a saturated anodize purple color.
It's so nice and refreshing to see these manufacturers actually taking user requests into account and actually being able to read the room, so to speak. Also them taking computer journalist and reviewer advice to heart and understanding that it actually helps them in the end.
In-Win once again captures my heart with their adventurousness with colors and design, they are always making such cool stuff.
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I love that cooler on the Lian Li Sup 01, thats a neat unit.
The Dubili is one of my favorite new cases announced, it looks super slick.
I'm really liking the montech King 95, its nice to see some light themes and curves like like that in cases again.
I REALLY REALLY hope Deepcool releases that fantastic Teal color they showed on the prototypes, They really should latch onto that color and run with that along with purple, white, and gray.
Thermaltake's Ceres series (lol) is lookin pretty slick too, im liking these new color trends all around.
That Streacom passive case is REALLY cool, but i'll have to admire it from afar, too rich for my blood.
The Fractal Terra excites me in its physical construction, I would love an M-ATX case made in the same method. Maybe available in a saturated anodize purple color.
It's so nice and refreshing to see these manufacturers actually taking user requests into account and actually being able to read the room, so to speak. Also them taking computer journalist and reviewer advice to heart and understanding that it actually helps them in the end.
In-Win once again captures my heart with their adventurousness with colors and design, they are always making such cool stuff.
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Will
4:40 The top glass panel is a one-way mirror with the mirrored side pointed down. That's not really how that works. One-way mirrors are really just partially translucent mirrors. A percentage of light will reflect, and the rest will pass through, and it actually isn't based on the direction. The reason it looks like a mirror on one side is because the lighting on that side is significantly brighter. Even when you only see half of the light from the bright side, it's still quite a bight brighter than the half of the dark side you're also seeing, so it overpowers. You can turn the mirror around and you'll still see a reflection on the side with more lighting and a window from the other side.
All this is to say that if the RGB inside the case isn't brighter than the ambient lighting of the room it's in, then it'll look like a mirror from above.
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4:40 The top glass panel is a one-way mirror with the mirrored side pointed down. That's not really how that works. One-way mirrors are really just partially translucent mirrors. A percentage of light will reflect, and the rest will pass through, and it actually isn't based on the direction. The reason it looks like a mirror on one side is because the lighting on that side is significantly brighter. Even when you only see half of the light from the bright side, it's still quite a bight brighter than the half of the dark side you're also seeing, so it overpowers. You can turn the mirror around and you'll still see a reflection on the side with more lighting and a window from the other side.
All this is to say that if the RGB inside the case isn't brighter than the ambient lighting of the room it's in, then it'll look like a mirror from above.
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Henry
Steve and team;
What case would you build in if air cooling performance was the only goal? PC is stored in a (ventilated) closet. I like air just due to much less long term maintenance/fewer worries. As the other room is used, fan noise level isn't a concern for any consumer-tier fans (the 120mm 2300rpm fans in my server in the same room aren't heard). Size is nearly irrelevant, as well.
Using Fractal R6 with 5 140mm Noctua case fans NH-D15 with all fans at full speed currently.
I wish Silverstone still made an AFFORDABLE rotated+ air penetrator case but 800 is just too much. 300 max would be ideal, but I would stretch to 400 for the perfect case.
Fractal Torrent is my best guess at this point but curious if there is potential better one if looks are not a concern and performance is what I'm really after
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Steve and team;
What case would you build in if air cooling performance was the only goal? PC is stored in a (ventilated) closet. I like air just due to much less long term maintenance/fewer worries. As the other room is used, fan noise level isn't a concern for any consumer-tier fans (the 120mm 2300rpm fans in my server in the same room aren't heard). Size is nearly irrelevant, as well.
Using Fractal R6 with 5 140mm Noctua case fans NH-D15 with all fans at full speed currently.
I wish Silverstone still made an AFFORDABLE rotated+ air penetrator case but 800 is just too much. 300 max would be ideal, but I would stretch to 400 for the perfect case.
Fractal Torrent is my best guess at this point but curious if there is potential better one if looks are not a concern and performance is what I'm really after
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Joseph
Flat-packed cases become interesting if it reduces costs for the consumer in ways that make some of the 2-300 case features available to those with a slightly smaller budget. One feature a DIY assembly case cannot skimp on too much is the strength and thickness of the parts because the manufacturers can't depend overly much on complex bends to hold tinfoil thick elements together. Using screws means the material has to be thick enough for the screws to hold structurally without stripping out the holes easily, and that means they'll have to build them to take the weight of modern cooling components. It probably means a few more invertable if you want it to be inverted designs which is also a plus depending on where the machine is going to live.
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Flat-packed cases become interesting if it reduces costs for the consumer in ways that make some of the 2-300 case features available to those with a slightly smaller budget. One feature a DIY assembly case cannot skimp on too much is the strength and thickness of the parts because the manufacturers can't depend overly much on complex bends to hold tinfoil thick elements together. Using screws means the material has to be thick enough for the screws to hold structurally without stripping out the holes easily, and that means they'll have to build them to take the weight of modern cooling components. It probably means a few more invertable if you want it to be inverted designs which is also a plus depending on where the machine is going to live.
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itech
Though I do love the Dubili idea (having posted saying we need a modular flatpack case a long time ago), what we really need is an mATX version that uses 120mm fans with two up front, and is therefore a lot smaller. Though I would say to move the power supply to the front so that there can be two sets of two fans pulling air from the base and up past the motherboard. I do wonder if giving a big enough air gap at the bottom means you could have the rear IO down there, thus orientating a tower CPU heatsink in the flow and stopping the GPU becoming a heat dam, though it might still be nice to have a riser and mount it towards the back of the motherboard.
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Though I do love the Dubili idea (having posted saying we need a modular flatpack case a long time ago), what we really need is an mATX version that uses 120mm fans with two up front, and is therefore a lot smaller. Though I would say to move the power supply to the front so that there can be two sets of two fans pulling air from the base and up past the motherboard. I do wonder if giving a big enough air gap at the bottom means you could have the rear IO down there, thus orientating a tower CPU heatsink in the flow and stopping the GPU becoming a heat dam, though it might still be nice to have a riser and mount it towards the back of the motherboard.
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Tho
Really wish a ton more cases allowed multiple HDDs, I want to keep my stuff on reliable storage that doesn't worsen with use or time and whatnot, so HDDs are far better than SSDs, but almost no case here lets you have more than 2 HDDs, it's annoying as someone who needs dozens of TBs of space and doesn't want to use NAS or other such services, while getting that amount of storage space on SSDs would cost way too much. Currently I'm forced to literally have cables dangling out of the case with the HDDs propped up on the outside behind it because I have no room inside to put the 8 or so HDDs I need connected without ruining airflow.
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Really wish a ton more cases allowed multiple HDDs, I want to keep my stuff on reliable storage that doesn't worsen with use or time and whatnot, so HDDs are far better than SSDs, but almost no case here lets you have more than 2 HDDs, it's annoying as someone who needs dozens of TBs of space and doesn't want to use NAS or other such services, while getting that amount of storage space on SSDs would cost way too much. Currently I'm forced to literally have cables dangling out of the case with the HDDs propped up on the outside behind it because I have no room inside to put the 8 or so HDDs I need connected without ruining airflow.
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Cameron
One way mirrors aren't really one way . Whichever side is more brightly lit will appear more mirror like. Sometimes they are called half-silvered mirrors indicating that they reflect roughly half the incident light and transmit the other half. The image you see on the brightly lit side is dominated by reflected light and on the dimly lit side the image you see is dominated by the transmitted light from the bright side. This gives the illusion of it being one-way but that's not really the case. Flipping the one-way mirror around will have little to no effect but flipping which side is bright will.
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One way mirrors aren't really one way . Whichever side is more brightly lit will appear more mirror like. Sometimes they are called half-silvered mirrors indicating that they reflect roughly half the incident light and transmit the other half. The image you see on the brightly lit side is dominated by reflected light and on the dimly lit side the image you see is dominated by the transmitted light from the bright side. This gives the illusion of it being one-way but that's not really the case. Flipping the one-way mirror around will have little to no effect but flipping which side is bright will.
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Gusstavv's
Cases with usefulness in mind before style are the ones that are interesting. I don't like the rave party in my room hype in PCs, is a bit idiotic since it distracts you from your games, specially if they are gloomy or creepy.
Anyways, also case designers don't take on mind the need of GOOD dust filters, I hate cleaning my computers and I've custom designed some filters for my computers. And disk bays are such useful things, but again they are being forgotten. Even a NVME bay would be great for quickly moving insane amounts of data from one place to another.
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Cases with usefulness in mind before style are the ones that are interesting. I don't like the rave party in my room hype in PCs, is a bit idiotic since it distracts you from your games, specially if they are gloomy or creepy.
Anyways, also case designers don't take on mind the need of GOOD dust filters, I hate cleaning my computers and I've custom designed some filters for my computers. And disk bays are such useful things, but again they are being forgotten. Even a NVME bay would be great for quickly moving insane amounts of data from one place to another.
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Rick
Given that you need a 420 aio to effectively cool the 13900, I'm increasingly frustrated by how few cases offer options for a top mounted 420 aio. Additionally I'm equally frustrated by the lack of cases that offer support for a rear mounted 240 rad for a 4090 aio/gpu like the msi suprim liquid 4090. The only case I've seen that offers both of these options is the cooler master haf 700. I wish lian LI would come out with yet another version of their wonderful lancool case that is 2 or 3 wider (front to back) and 2 or 3 taller.
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Given that you need a 420 aio to effectively cool the 13900, I'm increasingly frustrated by how few cases offer options for a top mounted 420 aio. Additionally I'm equally frustrated by the lack of cases that offer support for a rear mounted 240 rad for a 4090 aio/gpu like the msi suprim liquid 4090. The only case I've seen that offers both of these options is the cooler master haf 700. I wish lian LI would come out with yet another version of their wonderful lancool case that is 2 or 3 wider (front to back) and 2 or 3 taller.
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QuasiMonkey
The Antec Constellation matx case makes an interesting new choice having the PSU hidden away at the front of the case and drawing air in from the front, relying on bottom air intake and top/back exhaust for the main components instead of the traditional front and top/back. Though the PSU cables being pointed up or down depending on how the PSU is mounted will be, also interesting to see and cable manage.
I had the old giant Antec 900 case instead of the Antec Super Lanboy lol Nice to see them back.
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The Antec Constellation matx case makes an interesting new choice having the PSU hidden away at the front of the case and drawing air in from the front, relying on bottom air intake and top/back exhaust for the main components instead of the traditional front and top/back. Though the PSU cables being pointed up or down depending on how the PSU is mounted will be, also interesting to see and cable manage.
I had the old giant Antec 900 case instead of the Antec Super Lanboy lol Nice to see them back.
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permeus
I miss the days when a case was a case now there is actually the wrong choice heck for every right choice there is about 50 wrong ones, it s so hard to find the right choice for you.
I just want I cool, quiet black box I don t care about lights as in my view if you are looking at your pc box it means something must be going wrong, if there is light it means something is on fire (this is a lot more common nowadays) if there is nose it means something isn t fitted right or you need more/better fans.
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I miss the days when a case was a case now there is actually the wrong choice heck for every right choice there is about 50 wrong ones, it s so hard to find the right choice for you.
I just want I cool, quiet black box I don t care about lights as in my view if you are looking at your pc box it means something must be going wrong, if there is light it means something is on fire (this is a lot more common nowadays) if there is nose it means something isn t fitted right or you need more/better fans.
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Thomas
19:16 Please when you review the CTE 700, can you compare the aesthetics of the Glass model without the glass and the Air Model without the mesh front please.
It looks like the strat for best airflow while keeping decent aesthetics, would be to get the glass model and just leave the glass off so the only obstruction to airflow is the functional dust filter.
However it kind of looks like the Glass model might have a different dust filter with more decorative supports?
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19:16 Please when you review the CTE 700, can you compare the aesthetics of the Glass model without the glass and the Air Model without the mesh front please.
It looks like the strat for best airflow while keeping decent aesthetics, would be to get the glass model and just leave the glass off so the only obstruction to airflow is the functional dust filter.
However it kind of looks like the Glass model might have a different dust filter with more decorative supports?
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Lurker
Looking forward to the new be quiet! 901 case. You didn't feature the possible 3.5 bays toward the front, or show any good angles from the open side where the bays may be located. Hopefully your review will mention if it could be suitable for housing up to seven HDDs like the previous 900 series cases. I'm currently using the 900 rev.2, but dislike its front panel now that I have a 420mm AIO. I have five spinning rust drives and may be adding another soon.
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Looking forward to the new be quiet! 901 case. You didn't feature the possible 3.5 bays toward the front, or show any good angles from the open side where the bays may be located. Hopefully your review will mention if it could be suitable for housing up to seven HDDs like the previous 900 series cases. I'm currently using the 900 rev.2, but dislike its front panel now that I have a 420mm AIO. I have five spinning rust drives and may be adding another soon.
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shane
G'day Steve,
looks like Patrick is going to be very busy doing his case reviews with lots of interesting features to test for usability.
I think the best way to go for some standard of Motherboard Rear Connectors is have vertical Keepout Zones where the the ATX Screw Mounts are as they are parallel to each other in rows
I don't know if Vitali has a nickname but it should be Mater because at 9:11 he looks like a tow truck going backwards .
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G'day Steve,
looks like Patrick is going to be very busy doing his case reviews with lots of interesting features to test for usability.
I think the best way to go for some standard of Motherboard Rear Connectors is have vertical Keepout Zones where the the ATX Screw Mounts are as they are parallel to each other in rows
I don't know if Vitali has a nickname but it should be Mater because at 9:11 he looks like a tow truck going backwards .
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FlamingScar
I like seeing mATX get more love, not just for the reason that GPUs are bigher then mini itx mobos now anyways, but mainly price
You can get a good mATX board for th cost of a shotty at best mini itx board
Another reason is HDDs, yea I know HDDs are on their way out, but they still offer bulk storage, I find HDDs very good for older games, leave my SSD space for newer games that need it and put anything pre 2020 on the HDD
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I like seeing mATX get more love, not just for the reason that GPUs are bigher then mini itx mobos now anyways, but mainly price
You can get a good mATX board for th cost of a shotty at best mini itx board
Another reason is HDDs, yea I know HDDs are on their way out, but they still offer bulk storage, I find HDDs very good for older games, leave my SSD space for newer games that need it and put anything pre 2020 on the HDD
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Ryzard
You went after antec for their peripheral shift in terms of market strategy, but as a relatively recent ( 3-5 year) pc builder, I knew them first for their batteries and gadgets .
Owned several antec products, and they worked wonderfully, were durable as hell, and were useful for years to the point that I've looked for them specifically when I'm needing new things. Not sure if I just got lucky with my experience or not.
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You went after antec for their peripheral shift in terms of market strategy, but as a relatively recent ( 3-5 year) pc builder, I knew them first for their batteries and gadgets .
Owned several antec products, and they worked wonderfully, were durable as hell, and were useful for years to the point that I've looked for them specifically when I'm needing new things. Not sure if I just got lucky with my experience or not.
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You
H7 FLOW is still one of the best cases IMO. My old case with 5, 120mm fans, the GPU was having to ramp up to 2600rpms to keep up in demanding games in long sessions and was loud... With the H7 Flow and 4 140's, the GPU never ramps up above 1800rpms and remains mostly silent at all times. IMO I think a lot of it has to do with the fact the mesh/filter is not right on top of the fans and choaking them out.
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H7 FLOW is still one of the best cases IMO. My old case with 5, 120mm fans, the GPU was having to ramp up to 2600rpms to keep up in demanding games in long sessions and was loud... With the H7 Flow and 4 140's, the GPU never ramps up above 1800rpms and remains mostly silent at all times. IMO I think a lot of it has to do with the fact the mesh/filter is not right on top of the fans and choaking them out.
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Patrick
In my experience. The Coolermaster HAF 700 and HAF 700 EVO is the best enthusiast case on the market. I absolutely love building systems in it. And with dual 360mm top mount rads, it's fantastic for managing the rads while giving the 2 front 200mm fans up front as well as the bottom ones for all the air flow you'll ever need. I can't wait to finally have one of my own.
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In my experience. The Coolermaster HAF 700 and HAF 700 EVO is the best enthusiast case on the market. I absolutely love building systems in it. And with dual 360mm top mount rads, it's fantastic for managing the rads while giving the 2 front 200mm fans up front as well as the bottom ones for all the air flow you'll ever need. I can't wait to finally have one of my own.
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Alchemetica
All the wood accents and outer cases is taking us back to the 1970s when the wood look was applied to every appliance used in the home. Portable heaters were covered or screen printed with a wood look, toasters, and other kitchen appliances. Everything old is new again. Well done by the innovative designers. Could the next trend be Bakelite or a leatherette cover?
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All the wood accents and outer cases is taking us back to the 1970s when the wood look was applied to every appliance used in the home. Portable heaters were covered or screen printed with a wood look, toasters, and other kitchen appliances. Everything old is new again. Well done by the innovative designers. Could the next trend be Bakelite or a leatherette cover?
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