The ThermalTake Core P series of cases has been around for 7 years now and with that, they have had a variety of sized models as well as color and special editions. In fact, my wife's previous build was built in the Core P1, the Mini-ITX-sized model. While I loved the design there was room for improvement, especially with the feet and I noted that in our original coverage. So I was excited when I saw that Thermaltake introduced the Core P3 TG Pro which changed the base to better allow you to pick which orientation you want to use the case. It has the same open design that I loved previously and has been updated with modern I/O ports, a front fan bracket, and other changes. Today I’m going to see what is new and see if Thermaltake’s unique open-air design is still a good option in 2023.

For those of you who have been around for a while, you will most likely know that I have had a thing for small form factor builds going back before small form factor builds were a thing. We did our Lunchbox build series starting 14 years ago when we were building in a Shuttle. The options for compact builds with video cards have improved significantly over the years and a few companies have played big roles in that including Fractal with their Node 202 which helped bring the “console” form factor into the mainstream with a reasonably priced case option. Well, the Fractal Ridge is the first time that Fractal has been back to that form factor and while I am late to the party, I’m excited to see what they have changed. Especially now with PCIe 4.0 risers being available which address compatibility issues that some people ran into. So let's dive into the Ridge and see what it is all about and build a system in it to get the full experience.

The number of cool cases that come out each year far exceeds the number of cases that I have time to check out. Last year Thermaltake introduced the Tower 100 which was a new Mini ITX version of their long-standing Tower series. When the original Tower series came out I really wanted to check it out but didn’t have time, so when the ITX version came out I couldn’t pass up on it. Sadly I’ve had the Tower 100 sitting around for far too long withing having a chance to get into it but no longer. I have to see what Thermaltake did with the uniquely designed case, so let's dive in and check it out.  

Our first introduction to the Hyte brand was with the Revolt 3 launch last year. Hyte is a sister brand to iBUYPOWER and with the Revolt 3 we learned that they aren’t looking to continue the status quo, they are looking at each new product with fresh eyes and bringing new ideas. For the Revolt 3, the focus was on a travel-friendly case with a hidden carrying handle and features to make packing everything into the smaller case much easier. This last CES they also showed off their upcoming case, the Y60 which goes the other direction and is a case focused on desktop use, and with the Y60 they are specifically aiming at the market who loves posting up pictures of their systems in places like Reddit at an angle to show off the inside and front of your case. The Y60 brings the two together with a cornerless design and I’m excited to see what other kinds of changes Hyte has incorporated so let's dig in.

A lot of you will most likely be familiar with iBUYPOWER, a system builder who we have also covered cases from in the past. Today they are announcing their latest brand called HYTE which is going to focus on lifestyle and PC components. They are launching with a case that I’ve been looking forward to for a while now. They teased their Revolt 3 back at CES but we had no idea about the HYTE brand. iBUYPOWER has had the Revolt lineup in the past as their LAN-focused systems. Well, the Revolt 3 continues that focus, but with a completely new look. As the LanOC name might imply, we love LANs around here and I especially have a soft spot for SFF builds that make it easier to take your system to and from events. Dragging a monster build to and from a LAN is one of those things you do when you are younger and you eventually learn and avoid it. The new Revolt 3 from HYTE is designed with a handle in the top and with a focus on making it easy to transport for LAN events and esports which iBUYPOWER is also heavily focused on. So today I’m going to see what all the Revolt 3 has to offer and then see if it will be the next system that I’m taking to events. Let’s check it out!

I don’t think there is anything in PC hardware that I like more than when the community creates their own products. You mostly see it in the more hardcore enthusiast markets because there isn’t as big of a market for companies to throw money at but the interest is there. So with things like keyboards, Small Form Factor builds, and overclocking we have seen over the years the community as a whole put input into a design and someone or a small group step up and produce and evolve that product. Often those designs are on a different level in build quality and often extremely expensive as well. For the overclocking market, with this, there have been overclockers making their own pots, ways to delid CPUs, and even mounts to run CPUs without their heatspreader for better temps. Well, the Open Benchtable has that same history. It started with HWBOT and OverClocking-TV and later Streacom joined in for the production side of things. Well Streacom, after talking with Open Benchtable, sent over their BC1. On its surface, it is a test bench, but it is a unique take on one that I have been excited to check out and today's the day. Let’s take a look!

In December Fractal introduced their new ION SFX PSUs and at that time I speculated that Fractal having a renewed interest in SFX could potentially also mean a new SFX case in the future. I probed our Fractal rep with no luck as well but not long ago they reached out about a new case called the Era ITX and guess what, it has SFX support. I was already in, but after seeing the pictures I was even more interested as they had multiple color options and a top panel that was made out of tempered glass or wood with the wood type depending on which color option you went with! The Era ITX is a 16-liter capacity case that can fit ATX or SFX PSUs, up to a 240mm radiator, and full-length video cards. Not necessarily all at once, but I will get into that here in just a minute.

Back in 2017 at CES iBUYPOWER teased a concept that they had been working with, a PC case with a monitor built into the side panel. Now that idea itself isn’t completely new, there have been modders who have done it. But what they did was just have the LCD panel and nothing else, leaving a transparent side panel that you can still see everything inside with everything on the display floating and showing up almost like magic. This is well and good for a concept, but producing and selling what is basically a very complicated case mod is a whole different story and frankly I didn’t think they would do it. When last year at CES 2018 they actually introduced their Snowblind series of builds which included this feature I was surprised and impressed and it had me considering trying to do the same thing myself with a build. Buying a full build from them for the feature didn’t really make sense given my experience with PCs.  Well at the start of this month they made that a lot easier with the introduction of their first individually sold case, the Snowblind. Well today I finally get to check it out in person. I’ve been collecting white components to go inside the build and today I’m going to check out iBUYPOWERs first case and check out its side panel window LCD as well!

Back in 2016, I ran across a community inspired case called Sentry. It was designed in Poland as a side project by a wind turbine company. I reached out at potentially getting one in at the time but it being a side project they didn’t have any extra. It went on to have a successful Indiegogo campaign early in 2017. Well, they didn’t go away, in fact, they have been busy bringing in feedback all this time from the Sentry 1.0 owners and working on a new design. Talk about exciting! I was excited about the first design, being able to pack a true PC into a console form factor. What could they possibly have changed? Well, their changelog reads a lot like an open source software roadmap including showing what ideas they decided not to implement with reasons why. Even better, this time around for the Sentry 2.0 they made a few more test cases to spread around. You most likely have seen a few of them around YouTube and the internet by now. Well, we had a Sentry 2.0 come in as well and I’ve been playing around with it. I’m excited to finally take a closer look at this unique design and see if it was worth being excited about all this time.

A majority of the builds that I have at this point are SFF (Small Form Factor) builds but typically going SFF requires compromises. If you want something extremely fast, you are going to deal with heat. The other option is to go with one of the community made cases which are more compact and have better cooling without having to go with an ITX length video card. But they are expensive. So I was excited to see that Raijintek had a new design with a Dan Case like design with a full-length GPU on one side and the motherboard on the other. Their Ophion is also much cheaper as well and available in two size options. I was most excited for the Ophion Evo which is a little taller and adds support for a 240mm radiator. I’ve been using the Ophion Evo for a while now, you might have even seen it in our Asus Ryuo review, and today I am finally going to give the rundown on my experience with the case.

So we have to go back a few years to get to the Define S launch from Fractal Design. All the way back to April of 2015, a lot has changed in that time especially in the case market. The Define S came before the tempered glass explosion and there are a few other checkboxes that people look for in cases like hidden power supply mounting and some modularity for options with AIO and custom water cooling. So Fractal introducing a new Define S wasn’t a huge surprise. But I am interested in seeing what else Fractal has done to continue to evolve the always popular Define design. I’m sure they went beyond just hitting the standard features, so let's dive into the case and see what is new then build in it to get the full experience!

So every year our first article of the year is me going back and doing a quick recap of our year and then I take a look back at anything that won our editors choice award and see if it lived up to what I expected. I recently also started going back even beyond that and looking at Editors Choice winners from past years, only showing what is still in use. When you get back a few years, there just isn’t much that is still being used. But back in 2014, I reviewed the In Win D-Frame Mini and not only did it win an editors choice award, but it has been rocking and still in use to this day. In fact, it has a lot of miles on it with it going to just about every LAN that I’ve visited in that time. Well recently In Win announced new color options and one of them was bright orange with blue trim, aka LanOC colors. So I decided it would be fun to build a new PC in it and see how that same design has held up 4 years later.

I hope by now most of you have figured out that I love SFF builds. Over the years we have built a new Lunchbox build with the goal of going smaller and building an even more capable gaming rig to take to LANs. So I am always on the lookout for new and different cases that might fit the bill. Well, early this year I came across a company called GEEEK that has a few small ITX cases including one that really caught my eye that used a FlexATX power supply to save space. That was the A30 and GEEEK was nice enough to send one over to check out. With a unique extrusion based construction they were able to keep the costs down. With a budget-friendly price and an acrylic construction, Its looks good. But is it easy to build and how does it all perform when together? That is what I want to find out today.

After looking at the Fractal Meshify C Mini last week I figured I would see what other cases I had in the office to check out and I happened to have another Micro-ATX case that I had been excited about. This time it was from NZXT and it was the H400i. Like the Fractal, the H400i is a smaller version of the H700i that I didn’t get a chance to check out so this is a great chance to check out NZXTs new line of cases. The H series of cases have a new look that is an extension of what NZXT has been doing with their cases for a while, but the biggest feature of their new cases is the built-in CAM powered controller that powers the built-in lighting and fan controls. So today I’m going to break down the cases features, then build in it and see how this smart controller works.

Last August Fractal introduced there new Meshify product lineup with the Meshify C and it was extremely popular. For years now Fractal has had just one main style and the Meshify managed to keep the clean look while doing something different. It was also a departure from Fractal’s noise focused designs with a design focusing on cooling. Well, they are back at it again and this time around I’ve been testing the new case out. Today they are introducing the Meshify C Mini, a Micro-ATX or Mini-ITX variation of the Meshify C. It is just a smaller version of the original, but because I didn’t get a chance to check out the original this will give us a look at the new design with the smaller more compact Mini version.

I haven’t really had time to check out too many cases over the last few years but I’ve been trying to do a little catching up. On my very short list was a small ITX case that I’ve been seeing around all over the place from Phanteks. The Enthoo Evolv ITX is one of those rare cases that is priced like a budget case but seems to have some of the features and styling that you find in higher end cases. So I reached out to Phanteks and they were happy to send over the case. I’ve been testing it out with our Ryzen ITX setup and I wanted to sit down and talk a little about the case. So let's dive in to see what Phanteks has going on with this popular case.

I think everyone knows at this point that I’ve been on a big ITX kick for a while now. But sometimes when you need to build something completely crazy you have to go bigger. I did that with our Fridge build years ago. But what cases are a good pick to do that now? Well, it just so happens that I’ve had the Dark Base Pro 900 in the orange model from Be Quiet! sitting around the office for FAR too long. It’s about time I build something in it and see what it is all about. With a tempered glass side panel, orange highlights, and a lot of modularity it has the potential to be a great case. Let’s take a closer look and see if it is.

When it comes to cases, even just from a few years ago things have changed drastically. RGB and Tempered Glass are extremely popular but it feels a little like everyone is moving forward only to keep making everything similar. For a while now though Thermaltake has been making something completely unique in their Core P series of cases. The Core P5 and the Core P3 are both extremely popular, especially in the water cooling crowds because of their open but unique design. So when the Core P1 was announced at CES I immediately reached out to check one out. The P3 and P5 are far too large and heavy for me but the P1, but an ITX case might be a little better. So for a while now I have been toying around with the Core P1 and today I’m going to talk about it.

Typically when it comes to open air cases you have crazy one-off builds that are really only useful for tradeshows and then you have testbenches. The testbenches are normally plain looking and lack much more than the ability to add a fan or the bare minimum components needed for a testbench. A few years ago Primochill introduced their Wetbench line and they have revised it to the current iteration with huge changes in the design. I’ve been following it for a while but its allure finally got me after seeing it all over the internet on tech YouTube channels and websites so I reached out and surprisingly they were happy to send over a nice orange and white Wetbench for us to check out. If you follow us on Facebook or Twitter or my personal Instagram you have most likely seen the Wetbench in action recently. Well, it's about time to sat down and spoke a little about the overall experience.

Over the past four years, I have been running my main rig in the Magnum TH10 monster of a case. In that time I have abused the case almost every day and it has held up to that abuse without a ding, dent, or chip in the finish. So when I saw that Caselabs had introduced a new case and it was available in a bright orange I couldn’t get in touch with Caselabs fast enough. The new Bullet line of cases are much smaller and incorporate a lot of new features from what Caselabs have learned in the last few years including a dual chamber design. Given that I’ve never actually built an orange themed build and I’ve always wanted to, I set out to build a monster PC in the Bullet BH7. You can expect a project build in the future, but for now, I did want to sit down and dive into the Caselabs Bullet BH7 and tell everyone what it's all about and if they should pick one up for their next build.