Five Gaming Cases Between $80 And $120, Reviewed

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Test Settings And Benchmarks

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Test System Configuration
CPU Intel Core i7-3960X (Sandy Bridge-E): 3.30 GHz, Six Cores O/C to 4.25 GHz (34 x 125 MHz) at 1.40 V Core
CPU Cooler Coolink Corator DS 120 mm Tower
Motherboard Asus P9X79 WS: LGA 2011, Intel X79 Express, Firmware 0603 (11-11-2011) O/C at 125 MHz BCLK
RAM G.Skill F3-17600CL9Q-16GBXLD 16 GB (4 x 4 GB) DDR3-2200 Benchmarked at DDR3-1600 CAS 9 defaults
Graphics Nvidia GeForce GTX 580: 772 MHz GPU,  GDDR5-4008 Maximum Fan for Thermal Tests, SLI
Hard Drives Samsung 470 Series MZ5PA256HMDR, 256 GB SSD
Sound Integrated HD Audio
Network Integrated Gigabit Networking
Power Seasonic X760 SS-760KM ATX12V v2.3, EPS12V, 80 PLUS Gold
Software
OS Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Graphics Nvidia GeForce 296.10 WHQL
Chipset Intel INF 9.2.3.1020

We reused the test platform from Four ATX Cases For High-Capacity Water Cooling, Reviewed, but at an overclocked setting that’s more appropriate for air cooling. It includes Asus’ P9X79 WS and a sacrificial C0-stepping Core i7-3960X.

While we normally choose a cooler for its low noise and high cooling, Coolink’s Corator DS provides the moderately-low temperatures and moderately-high noise needed to properly evaluate the airflow and noise-dampening capabilities of these cases.

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Benchmark Configuration
Prime95 v25.8 64-bit executable, Small FFTs, 11 threads
3DMark 11 Version: 1.0.1.0, Extreme Preset: Graphics Test 1, Looped
RealTemp 3.40 Average of maximum core readings at full CPU load
Galaxy CM-140 SPL Meter Tested at 1/2 m, corrected to 1 m (-6 db), dB(A) weighting
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.
3 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Ramlethal
    why is it between 80 to 120 if the most expensive ones are 410 and stealth priced at 100 ?
    Reply
  • Crashman
    19046365 said:
    why is it between 80 to 120 if the most expensive ones are 410 and stealth priced at 100 ?
    Because it was written four years ago?
    Reply
  • Tschrom
    Honestly, that's probably still true today, if not even cheaper. You can find good quality Full ATX cases for around $80 now, and to spend that much ($410) on a case is just a waste of money. If you really know what you're doing, you don't need to spend anywhere near that much on a case just to house your components. I'm using a Thermaltake Versa H22 SE, which is pretty small (only a mid-ATX case and cheap at only $40) in regards to cases, yet I am able to keep everything quite cool and even made some manual customizations to the case to ensure everything fits well and works well. And I'm using only Air Cooling. Really the case you use comes down to "do the components fit, and is there adequate cooling". Even then, the cooling part can be adjusted to what is necessary with some manual customizations or even just so much as ensuring that your case fans' CFM is adequate for cooling of your currently installed components (or water, but water cooling doesn't work in my current setup so I have no opinion on that).
    Reply