Wow! This case is great. You can completely customize this case and invert the motherboard and move everything around. My Corsair H115i used to sit on the metal brace on the top which made it easy to install the fans to the radiator (without the motherboard installed). I am sure the metal brace also helps put less stress on the radiator. However, I moved the radiator to the front intake and my temps went down 10C! My current fan setup is 2x140mm Noctua NF-A14 PPC-2000 as intakes for the radiator, 3x120mm Noctua Nf-S12A as exhaust on the top, and 1x140mm NF-A14 as exhaust on the back side. Soon, I will attach more fans to the H115i as a push/pull system. This will require removing all of the hard drive bays! The front intake fans have a big hole above/in-between/or below them no matter if you use 120mm or 140mm fans which was another reason I decided to put a radiator there to prevent the hot air from re-circulating through the front. I thought they did this on purpose to fit 3X120mm fans but that does not fit either so you can only mount 2x120mm or 2x140mm with this giant hole (I'll take pics soon)! You can remove the 5.25 drive bay to install one more fan (140mm or 120mm) in the front (the case comes with a fan shroud/bracket for this), but I wanted at least one blu-ray drive at the front so this did not apply to my pc build.
The led strips are super nice and cool looking and they even put an off setting for those that don't care for them. I mounted one strip on the top of the case near the glass and the other strip on the right side of the case near the glass. The top one fell down, so I removed the pre-installed pads and replaced them with 3m double-sided tape and they haven't fallen since. The qi charger hasn't been used yet, but I am glad the top of the case is flat in case I want to place a phone or book on top (the vents are on the side of the top and towards the back)
This case is a fingerprint magnet for sure, but it looks wonderful. I was a little surprised the plastic black front and tops collect fingerprints as much as the tempered glass side panel! I did not have to move the motherboard tray down in order to horizontally/top install the Corsair H115i, but this case allows you to move the motherboard lower at the cost of losing your bottom PCIE slots.
For cable management, the cables have about an inch on the backside and plenty of tie down spots. If you're lazy you can just shove your cables back there and not tie them down and no one will ever know! Also, the 3.5" hdd mounts are easily removed, but are made so they don't block the air too much so you could leave them in. I decided to take the extra ones out, plus you can put a rubber HDD slot shroud/cover (only one included with the case) to use on one of the 3.5" mount holes to make cover it (I don't know why couldn't they couldn't give you 5 of these covers for those that don't use 3.5" drives)!
As for negatives, there is no psu shroud which is extremely disappointing as I would rather bundle the extra length of the psu cables in the shroud allowing for the exact length of the psu cables outside of the shroud. The PSU also has a custom bracket where the PSU can move left/right for those that need to move the motherboard tray down. I don't believe I have an option to remove the psu bracket in order to mount the psu like normal on the left side of the case so I left mine at the default of about 2" to the right. I also noticed if i moved it to the closest setting of 1" to the right, the on/off rocker switch gets pushed out rendering that spot unusable.
The motherboard mount has a plastic "holding" pin as the middle screw in an atx board to hold the motherboard while you fasten the rest of the screws. This makes installation of the motherboard a breeze. However, I noticed that several screws were just cheaply made, specifically the 5.25 drive bay screws (they only give you 8 instead of the 12 screws you need) and the pci slot screws. I also laughed that they are tooless screws but you still need a phillips screwdriver to tighten/loosen them.
The fan control hub seems to not relay the correct pwm speed back to my motherboard, so my motherboard can't properly control the case fans connected to the fan hub (which may be a noctua issue since they don't like fan hubs in general). There is no way to get another led strip if it dies as the strips are specific to the manufacturer.
Overall the case looks great. I love the fan filters and case options. If you don't have a bunch of noctua NF-S12A fans laying around (like i did) I would look at a bunch of the NF-A14s to complete this case connected straight to your motherboard (as long as your motherboard supports pwm) and I would still go with the Corsair H115i with four NF-A14 PPC-2000 fans for the CPU Cooler. Overall this is a great case if you don't mind the size and nuances.
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 2 |
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