In watching the PC construct scene within the 2020s, what do we discover essentially the most wonderful factor concerning the mainstream PC-case market—that’s, chassis from roughly $80 to $120? It is that circumstances have held that worth line for over a decade, regardless of virtually all the pieces on the planet round them getting pricier: graphics playing cards, school tuition, a dozen eggs. We’ve actually seen just a few latest examples of merchandise that ought to match into this market being priced nearer to $150. However Gigabyte is among the manufacturers that’s holding out at “traditional” costs for now. And that traditional pricing makes us really feel a lot better about what its $109.99 C301 Glass has to supply. It is a big-capacity case with a lot of air-cooling potential, bling if you’d like it, and a sound worth proposition.
The Design: Nailing Down the Fundamentals
You may get this case cheaper, for those who do not thoughts it in black; that variant is priced at a delightful $99.99. That’s about $20 cheaper than the common worth of a equally configured glass-sided case from again when glass sides first changed plastic home windows because the mainstream market alternative. Our C301 Glass White comes with an additional $10 upcharge for its customized end, however $110 for a glass-sided case that features followers continues to be decidedly on the “worth” finish of the spectrum.
Good mainstream circumstances have all the time included regardless of the aggressive connectivity normal is to one-up their low-cost rivals. The C301 Glass White meets that criterion with a single Kind-C port linked to a USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 cable. Gigabyte sticks with old-school, separate headphone and mic jacks, which is ok for this reviewer’s older SteelSeries headset, since I now not have its headset combo splitter cable, however it’ll power some whose headsets have a local combo plug to purchase a splitter that has two stereo plugs. (You possibly can’t win everybody.)
We additionally see a pair of USB 3.2 Gen 1 Kind-A ports, energy and drive-activity indicator LEDs, and a pair of buttons. The smaller button selects among the many built-in ARGB controller’s 13 lighting modes, and Gigabyte was sensible to print the legend “LED” subsequent to what can be a reset button in lots of different circumstances. It is a fairly stacked port panel.
Gigabyte positioned an ARGB strip behind its front-panel brand to match the 4 included ARGB followers, and even timed its sample to coincide with the section of the fan that sits behind the emblem.
Along with the three 120mm ARGB entrance followers, the C301 Glass White features a matching rear-panel fan mounted on screw slots to permit only a bit over an inch of vertical adjustment. An expansion-slot panel beneath it options seven slot covers and no separator bars, and the power-supply mount beneath that’s drilled to just accept a full-size energy provide in both orientation (prime down or up).
Behind the snap-off face panel is sufficient room to mount as much as three 140mm or 120mm followers, and a 2.4-inch hole behind these followers permits customers so as to add radiators as much as 460mm lengthy. Though Gigabyte insists that this spot solely matches radiators as much as 360mm format (utilizing three 120mm followers), we had little bother becoming a Corsair H170i 420mm-format (triple-140mm-fan) radiator in the identical spot. Gigabyte could also be being cautious right here, as we are able to think about that some 420mm-format radiators probably exceed the 460mm of house. Additionally, some builders will probably encounter points whereas attempting to get their radiator completely centered, since rolled edges thicken the panel across the periphery of each gap.
A facet good thing about producers ditching exterior bays and big drive racks is that the entrance space of the motherboard tray is unblocked, permitting motherboards as much as the complete width of the tray to suit. That’s 15.9 inches (round 404mm) of depth for a motherboard, graphics card, and/or radiator, however we’ll settle for Gigabyte’s 400mm spec as being shut sufficient.
After all, 400mm isn’t sufficient house for 3 140mm followers, however most 360mm-format radiators will match, and due to the chassis’ 2 inches of house above the motherboard, some 280mm-format items will, as properly. Notice that for those who’re going for twin radiators, the entrance one might must be put in earlier than the highest, and that tube-fitting clearance will in all probability drop its most dimension right down to the 360mm format that Gigabyte advisable within the first place.
The other facet of the motherboard tray encompasses a six-device ARGB controller, two 2.5-inch drive trays and an open power-supply tunnel with a drive rack containing two extra drive trays. Notice that the oblong cable passages don’t have sq. grommets, a typical characteristic amongst circumstances within the C301 Glass White’s worth class.
The forward-facing two-pin header that has no locking characteristic is the place the ARGB controller’s mode button was plugged in on the manufacturing unit. It fell out in transit; it fell out each time we opened the right-side panel, too. 5 of the six ARGB outputs are occupied by the inventory 4 followers and Gigabyte ARGB front-panel brand.
The drive trays mounted within the C301’s decrease cage help the builder’s alternative of three.5-inch followers through damped pin mounts on the edges, or 2.5-inch drives through holes within the plastic body.
4 thumbscrews safe the decrease drive cage to the underside panel, the place its screw slots allow you to slide it ahead to make room for oversize energy provides. The as-delivered configuration gives 8.4 inches of house for an influence provide and a pair of.4 inches of house for a front-panel radiator, and sliding it ahead will increase the power-supply house to 9.6 inches, whereas lowering radiator house to as little as 1.2 inches.
Different peculiarities within the above photograph are that the power-supply mud filter is held on by tabs (making it difficult to take away with the case upright), however that its house additionally has brackets for a slide-out filter. Additionally, Gigabyte opted for smaller foam pads on the toes slightly than punching screw holes into bigger pads. Each of those point out potential for a better mannequin of the case to make use of the identical underpinnings.
Constructing With the C301 Glass White
The C301 Glass White features a conversion slot bracket that permits for clear vertical mounting of your graphics card. Additionally within the field are a help bracket for the cardboard slot of a vertical-card-mount riser cable, a printed set up information, 4 ratcheting cable ties, a pair of lengthy standoffs for the vertical conversion {hardware}, and a screw equipment that comprises all the pieces you’ll have to assemble the PC with a motherboard as much as EATX in dimension. The non-compulsory vertical card mount riser cable have to be bought individually.
Cables embrace a USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 for the Kind-C port, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 (labeled USB 3.0) for the 2 USB Kind-A ports, a front-panel button/LED group, HD Audio for the entrance panel microphone/headphone jacks, and SATA energy/ARGB enter for the ARGB controller. The ARGB enter is supposed to show the ARGB controller right into a passive hub for the motherboard’s ARGB (if help for ARGB is current on the board, in fact). Additionally included, however not proven, are the fan energy cables, that are 3-pin and rely on a motherboard to have voltage management on its fan headers to allow fan-speed management.
As you’ll be able to see beneath, our elements simply slipped into place with loads of house to spare, leaving sufficient room for us to develop the system to incorporate a supersized graphics card and/or component-type liquid cooling, if had these been our need.
Eagle-eyed readers would possibly spot the 4 screw holes atop the power-supply tunnel that will have supported the non-compulsory upright card bracket conversion, however we predict the construct appears to be like superb with its graphics card mounted within the conventional method.
Right here’s a fast rundown of the elements used: The iCUE H100i RGB Professional XT and FSP Dagger Professional 850 had been each offered particularly for our case evaluations, whereas different {hardware} was gathered from earlier check builds. We used mounted fan pace, CPU clocks, and voltage to acquire constant outcomes.
Testing the Gigabyte C301 Glass White
A play-by-play on efficiency is barely fascinating when there’s one thing to debate, and the 4 circumstances we’re utilizing right now are so comparable in design that the one thermal end result to face out is the C301 Glass shedding the race on voltage-regulator temperatures, albeit by a nostril.
In that check, the C301 got here in a mere 2 levels C worse than the pack common. It’s nonetheless chilly sufficient to run in a 50 diploma C local weather (in case you are, that’s). Since we aren’t, we’ll simply transfer on to the noise check.
Even the sound-pressure numbers are too near warrant a prolonged dialogue, with the C301 Glass falling into the center of a decent pack…
With no efficiency factors to hold into our conclusion, options and high quality are all that’s left for us to debate.
The Verdict: A Stable Mainstream Chassis for the Greatest Mainboards
So, the high quality seems to be there: Though C301’s construct feels a tad flimsy in spots, its 17.1 kilos of fabric make it beefier than most of its opponents within the charts above, save the SilverStone Seta H1, which not too long ago dropped from a too-high $200 MSRP to an almost-reasonable $138 road worth. After all, the Seta H1 additionally has the cable-passage grommets that we famous lacking from the C301 Glass, and it has (gasp!) mud filtration.
Mud filters are issues that just about each mainstream case has included for a few years, and eradicating these means dipping right into a “funds case” characteristic set. However a funds case wouldn’t have a Gen 2×2 cable for a USB 3.2 Kind-C port, nor a trio of consumption followers, nor an ARGB controller. Perhaps all of the ARGB visibility shall be Gigabyte’s rationale for not at the least sticking a filter sheet to the again of its face-panel mesh? In case you can reside with that, or are prepared to DIY your individual answer, the C301 may very well be a relative cut price.
(A ending notice: Talking of ARGB, it wasn’t till after we’d completed up our construct photographs that we discovered the best way to get the ARGB controller handy off management to no matter’s linked to its enter: We needed to maintain the button for 2 seconds. We surprise why Gigabyte didn’t point out that in its directions.)
