Roundup: Four Gaming Cases Under $150

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Building In Hades

The NZXT Hades includes several thumb screws and three additional sets of 3.5” hard drive brackets, in addition to the preinstalled single set of drive brackets. Shoulder screws prevent over-tightening in the rubber grommets, which reduce noise transmission from hard drives to the drive cage.

Though our particular sample arrived slightly twisted, we found that the NZXT Hades' frame was thin to the extent that the weight of a few parts was enough to make it sit flat. Our full-sized components installed easily, though there was a small amount of overlap between the hard drive and video card.

Graphics cards up to 16.65” long can be installed through the drive cage all the way to the front-panel brace, but doing so reduces the number of bays that can hold drives. Only 10.5” exists between the back of a 3.5” hard drive and the case’s slot panel.

The narrow case width and the fact that the side fan is positioned high inside the case prevents the side fan from being used with most tower-style CPU coolers. We had to remove the side fan completely to install our test system components.

Between the side fan and exterior mesh, we found another dust-filtering screen.

With the side fan removed and its mesh cover securely attached with tape, we were ready to test the system.

Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
104 Comments Comment from the forums
  • skora
    Good article. But I'm a little surprised that the Element actually found the Buy award. Usually seems like that's set aside for superior products that don't have the QC issues this did.

    I'm sure there will be request for this case and that and across a lot of price ranges.

    If you do enough of these, you could do a "Best Gaming Case for the Money" series. Or is that peeing in Don's yard?
    Reply
  • sarsoft
    No Antec Nine Hundred case...
    Reply
  • p1n3apqlexpr3ss
    That wouldnt be a bad idea tbh skora, would like to know what the best budget case is out there... not excactly a fan of the antec 200/300
    Reply
  • 4ILY45
    No CM 690 II??
    Reply
  • bk641
    the cm doesn't have a fan control option, afaik.
    Reply
  • Gosh, that Zalman is butt-ugly.
    Reply
  • zoemayne
    ANTEC 902?
    Reply
  • sarsoft
    More cases need to be added. There are other case under $150 that are better choices.
    Reply
  • bk641
    the lancool (lian-li) k62 is a very, very good case for a sub $100 range. i'm using one, and it has pretty much everything you'd want in a mid-tower case. i especially like its HDD bay system, which can be configured to have the hard drives straight on, or perpendicular. in addition to that there are four quiet fans (two on top) and room for two 5870s.
    Reply
  • Crashman
    sarsoftNo Antec Nine Hundred case...No OLD cases. The Cooler Master case ended up in here by mistake, it was supposed to be for stuff released from November onward.
    Reply