Gadgetory

we spent the whole of 2017 complaining about air flow in cases and it seems that some manufacturers have heard our complaints for 2018 it's time to round up the best of show for CES 2018 focusing primarily on the case is revealed at this year's event we saw plenty of enclosures that belong innate needs work category but there were also innovators for the year options from Lian Li coolermaster silver stone and even enter Mac's are all worth talking about but they weren't alone in the CES showcase some of the unit's on display managed to bring an airflow back while others makes the better air flow ventilation alongside the tempered glass obsession and some did no airflow at all we'll get through all of those and more in this best cases of CES 2018 roundup before that this video is brought to you by thermal grizzly makers of the conductor not liquid metal that we recently used to drop 20 degrees off of our temperatures thermal grizzly also makes traditional thermal compounds we use on top of the IHS like cryo not and hydronaut pastes learn more at the link below let's open up this coverage with our best of show overall award this one easily goes to the LeAnn leo 11 dynamic and 11 air enclosures built as a collaborative project between lammle and overclocking engineered air Bauer the case makes excellent use of space without getting too wide the O 11 manages to relocate the power supply into a separate compartment which frees up the entire interior for optimized airflow pathways two core components moving the PSU to the back of the case means that the bottom can be configured with intake fans feeding the GPU directly and the CPU can be cooled via liquid or bottom front intake the O 11 air case has a grilled front and top supporting up to 360 millimeters worth of fans in each location the radiators are an alternative and are also supported in the O 11 dynamic side mounted radiators and fans can also be positioned in the case useful for custom loop machines if that's more your thing and the O Levin has too many features to really recap and around a video but to go over the basics here's what we talked about at the show the O 11 air is intended to ship at 120 dollars without any fans at all or $150 with three front mounted non LED fans and three side mounts at RGB LED fans six total from what we were told by Lian Li representatives the O 11 dynamic case will offer 0 fans and acts as the front grills in favor of tempered glass jumping up $230 in price the dynamic is meant for liquid cooling builds and feeds its intake primarily from the underside of the chassis Lian Li has about an inch of breathing room under the case which our testing has found to be sufficient for most use cases and should chart top GPU quillian performance given the minimal distance from the GPU and the underside this keeps air pressure high as well other features include dual power supply supports if you wanted it with semi modularity the choice is between two power supplies or you could use one of the power supply slots for hard drives Lian Li and our bauer focused on function here and we think this is easily the most promising case of CES it's something that manages to keep visuals in mind while also allowing for once airflow into the case and it does so without being massive either as a quick side mention LAN Lee also showed the less function focused fusion elite under their land cool brand which still has many TBD specifications and components so we can't go too deep on this one the fusion elite should ship at around $90 and he uses a slightly open front panel for more intake than a closed-off front case with a side mounting for more intake still well look at this in more detail once we have a review sample through contacts at the show we found the cooler master suite and showed up unannounced to check out the modified aged 500 P cases this one landed us in our biggest surprise category because we were surprised that cooler master led us in the suite ok maybe not we were surprised that cooler master a company which provided resistance to our criticisms of the H 500 P managed to turn around such a critical set of changes in a relatively short amount of time despite initial head-butting over our H 500 P review and mesh mod the company is now upgrading old and new designs tighten up the front and top panels reducing risk of the case falling apart and is also moving to improve air flow the aged 500 M version of the case further improves quality by getting the left side panel flush with the case something that none of the aged 500 PV variants just to do and it's also offering swappable mesh and glass for the front panel which should theoretically resolve many of our concerns with the initial case launch including air flow and build quality as for the Aged 500 p refresh that's now using a screw to hold the top panel in place which we think is brilliant if simple and the front panel is now using a clip to firmly mount it in quick testing we move to the demo table more than the front panel when ripping at it and we also noticed that the left tempered glass panel is now more secure rather than wobbling back and forth the power supply now mounts in a bracket similar to the 600 C or s ting 40 so you no longer have to remove the entire power slide shroud to get it in there and all of these changes will roll out to the channel so future buyers of the gray h 500 PE will find these improvements in that case as the channel sells out of existing inventory there are two mesh options for the white case right now with one including a dust filter and one without a dust filter cooler master is still finalizing the design here the mesh modded version of the aged 500 P also has slightly stronger structural integrity in the front panel because since there's no glass there they can do a cross bar to hold the plastic together without that annoying creaking noise that the original case made learn more about the H 500 P and H 500 m and our cooler master coverage so far it looks like CM has done a great job at listening to major criticisms of the case despite something of a standoff at first publication moving on to best small form-factor the N when a one was first shown at Computex but has been finalized for sale in 2018 the a one was originally demonstrated with a wood panel something that anyone is still hoping to do but not for the first round of the case manufacturing process is still being dialed in for making the wood panels so for now it's shipping as you see it here the white and black options are offered immediately and the enclosures should ship at around $140 the units include an RGB LED strip underneath encased in an acrylic side skirt that slightly obscures to 120 millimeter bottom intake fans another 120 millimeter fan can be installed on the side with the right panel punctured for exhaust or intake ventilation we found the case to be incredibly compact and of a good look in ones closest primary competition from this year came from per stone who converted their Computex mini-itx cases into micro ATX cases for 2018 and that brings us to the best micro ATX category it's almost a shallow victory for silverstone to take best micro ATX cases seeing as there was nearly zero competition this year still we wanted to take a moment to highlight the LD 0 1 & LD 0 2 by silverstone which have been reworked from combi text to a slightly larger form factor the LD 0 1 & 2 are inverted motherboard orientation cases with some focus on modularity for future designs we're told that future iterations of these frames might include mesh paneling as well despite an immediate forum focused design silverstone has a few functional elements like side ventilation on the paneling and top ventilation alongside a GPU support structure that mounts to the side wall and these are accompanied by odd design choices - like the pipe that has no real purpose aside from looks and those are also odd regardless the inverted layout is one that we think will do well with future mesh designs should they ship and the airflow dynamics of the case should change in interesting ways with that mesh front well look at this more in the future enter Max's Sabre a lands in the most improves category we see a lot of cases over two or three trade shows each receiving small updates to prototypes as the case keeps going and sometimes they never even ship but most improved belongs to a case that has been shown a few times has changed and still manages to go out to market the Sabre Ray was first shown at CES 2017 then at Computex mid-year and then it vanished at CES 2018 we learned that it's finally nearing production and the case has been modified for several key changes that improve overall quality and value in our coverage of the new Sabre a we revealed that the top and front panels are interchangeable so the mesh and acrylic options can be swapped or changed to full mesh enter max plans to ship to mesh inserts with the case so you'll be able to structure the enclosure to focus fully on air flow or if you prefer use included acrylic to get more looks oriented enter max further modified its light pipe to be RGB now rather than fixed color because you can't stay in business otherwise and it integrates synchronization with other LED products the same array should land at around $160 and we'll include a few fans in the final model CRN our max coverage for more information on this one this one is the least interesting case and lands in more of an honorable mention category so wanted to keep an eye on just not all that impressive this was the corsair obsidian 500 d it's the least interesting strictly because it's so safe it's a steel and glass box that has some fans its shaped like other boxes it mounts components like other boxes it uses large parts of the existing 5 70 X 2 lanes so it's not new tooling and it doesn't necessarily take any major risks that said sometimes it's better not to take risks there's a reason traditional design exists and it's because it works coursers primary changes have been to add the hinged doors lifted from their own concepts late at Computex but most of the rest remains standard it's an ATX tower with some front intake and lots of space internally that about sums this one up it's a lateral evolution of the 570 X which isn't necessarily a bad thing it's just also not that exciting we didn't see a lot of budget cases this year so we're giving this budget case category to the Versa age 26 and the j-20 to these cases were shown in thermal takes side room not even really publicly that known about and they shipped alongside the age 27 and j 23 the hmj series cases are differentiated in number primarily by their front panel the age 26 has a mesh front panel while the 27 has a closed-off front panel the same is true for 22 and 23 where the 22 unit has a mesh panel we find both mesh variants appealing for cheap entry-level options with tempered glass but we don't have finalized fan specs and don't know what they're going to ship with in terms of cooling either way they're affordable and land in the budget class and we think that the mesh options are worth keeping an eye on design isn't bad overall so that's a plus but they're mostly just sort of semi discrete black boxes with mesh ventilation as a quick mention while on the topic of thermal take we also looked at the thermal take view 37 chassis this one has some interesting elements like fitment for 200 millimeter fans which will definitely excite some people but we'll place this one and our annual needs work category the view of 37 has a lot of the same problems at the h5 repeated it's got no mesh on the front it has limited intake on the sides and you're basically relying on whatever pressure you can to get air into the chassis there were a lot more cases at the show and we didn't spend hands-on time with every single one this is the everything house category we didn't get much time to check them out but coolermaster also had the Q 300 P small form-factor case once again enclosed in glass and also had the MC 600 pro for $130 marked down from 160 and the MC 500 maker for 170 marked down from 200 more on these later maybe from thermal take the company also had a view 91 enclosure basically a larger server sized variant of the view 71 complete with a three to four foot wide hinged door and a fish tank like accommodations internally it's definitely a looker but it's also gigantic and expensive Silverstone had finalized versions of the red line no.7 which pivots in a huge way from the chart leading our l06 from last year the red lines your seven sticks with more closed off front paneling and has more of an artsy look about it it was first shown at Computex but now has been finalized the company also had its PMO too still somewhat ventilated but not as much as the PMO one Silverstone is beginning to pivot towards the closed front design feeling an industry pressure from nearly every other manufacturer separately Silver's don't have the CS 381 which we might have a project for later it's a micro ITX server box I can fit eight hard drives with an additional two hard drives mountable if we remove fans fantex had as p300 special edition cases but the closed off ventilation leaves a lot to be desired and it's also a trend with the company since the P 400 the 350 X is a bit more interesting from fan tags but still relatively closed off in the least it has some side match on the front panel but you're still fighting the 90-degree turns and reduced air pressure on the intake the bigger focus here is on RGB LEDs primarily a strip between the tempered glass and the power supply deep cool meanwhile showed its baron case and quad stellar again for the third or fourth time so nothing new from them these cases are ones that we've seen for over a year now just with RGB variants included and Corsair had a spec Omega that we didn't feel fitting enough to make it into any award korie's as primarily a spec alpha phase with a 460 X chassis $100 price point that said it may interest some of you so we wanted to point it out once again and you can check individual coverage of each of these companies on our channel if you want to see more info on each particular case subscribe for more go to patreon.com/scishow and exit helps out directly or go to store that gamers nexus net to pick up a mod mat like the one we have on our asset table I'll see you all next time you