Overall and Final Verdict
Like I said before, I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while. iBUYPOWER showed off early versions of the Revolt 3 back at the start of the year with CES and they were very receptive to feedback as well at that time. It’s great to see that original design evolve even more into what is now a really cool SFF tower case. I brought up NZXT and the H1 early on because the design and styling does share a lot with it and iBUYPOWER and NZXT have always worked close. The Revolt 3 is significantly different than the H1 in just about every aspect size included. For example, the easy-to-remove side panels aren’t on the H1 and the Revolt 3 has room for better cooling and drops the riser cable all together which has caused big problems for the H1. I also can see the side panels and mesh behind them being used for easy customization to color match to your favorite colors, team colors, and for esport events, it could even be used to match the side of the map or red and blue like a lot of events do to set the team sides apart.
HYTE did a great job of focusing on the LAN/esports aspects with the Revolt 3. The built-in pull out headphone hangers aren’t something I would think of but help simplify things when using the system at an event. The tower size means the system has a small footprint which is very important and of course the carrying handle up on top is huge. I love that they designed the handle to be fully integrated and hidden when not in use as well.
Performance was a concern just like any SFF system but with the Revolt 3 fitting in 240 or 280mm AIO coolers into the system, it will help keep things cool on the CPU side. They also allow for full-sized aftermarket cards which will help keep temperatures down there as well. I think the Revolt 3 fits current monster GPUs better than a lot of full ATX systems which is crazy. I would still offer one warning though, avoid a blower-style GPU. Blowing all of the heat out of the PCI slot is normally perfect for an SFF system like this, but with the tower design, it means blowing all of the heat into the bottom compartment which wouldn’t be ideal.
The rest of the downsides to the Revolt 3 aren’t too bad. It is a little heavy for an SFF system, normally a lot of the SFF cases integrate more aluminum. But avoiding that also has a tradeoff in the pricing which I will talk about in a minute. The special edition with the hard plastic flight case and is in my opinion the best feature that the Revolt 3 offers. But from what I understand this is only exclusive to the launch which is a bit of a bummer as I think a lot of people would take advantage of the case for LAN use. The other issue I ran into was with the included 700-watt SFX-L PSU, the CPU power cable was just a hair short for our Aorus motherboard leading to it being run across the top of our AIO cooler.
The SFF case market is an interesting one. It is a lot like the enthusiast keyboard market where for a long time everyone ignored the small keyboards and things that the enthusiasts wanted focusing on gaming leading to the communities to create their own designs. SFF cases, especially smaller more compact designs have been expensive and community-designed with just a few exceptions from case manufacturers. Recently though companies have noticed the interest and have been starting to bring out better SFF options and the HYTE Revolt 3 is another example of that. iBUYPOWER has been working on their own designs for a while now for their prebuilt systems, especially when it comes to smaller systems like their Revolt line. Starting the new HYTE brand and opening up their design to be sold without buying a full system is them recognizing the same thing. They didn’t take the same route as some of the community-made designs which are all aluminum, they helped keep costs down there, and also by being able to combine the volume that their prebuilt systems offer helps keep the price down as well. The Revolt 3 has an MSRP of $129 if you are buying the case without a power supply and is $249 when you include the 700-watt 80 Plus Gold PSU. The $120 price of the power supply ends up being a great deal if you compare it with buying your own SFX-L power supply and that ignores that they preinstall it in the case and have the wires shortened and setup specifically for the case. If you run your own power supply, you will have to get a modular one to keep the wiring down and most likely the cables will be longer and harder to manage. You might be able to save a little bit of money however if you don’t need the 700 watts and go with a lower wattage option. But I still don’t think it's worth it. The case price of $129 isn’t bad as well, it is well below what the lower production case options will be at. Its most direct competition will be with a case like the NR200 from Cooler Master which is similar in overall size and has the same MSRP (though is on sale for a little less right now). The Revolt 3 however focuses on a little bit of a different audience with the tower design and integrating in things like the handle and headphone hangers. Overall I’m really liking the Revolt 3 and hope to get it out to a few LANs soon.
Live Pricing: HERE
