Awards: Best & Worst PC Cases of 2020

this year marked a major turning point for case manufacturing and design where we've finally gotten into territory where there's actually a lot of sub 100 cases and especially 60 70 cases that have either potential for very high performance thermally or ship with a good configuration stock that allows for high throttle performance so this is finally starting to shape up to be a fairly diverse case market where we've gotten away from just slap glass on all the sides and put rgb leds in it and call it a day now there's a lot of actually very good cases to look at and this roundup will hopefully help you figure out what to buy by recapping our last year or so of case reviews before that this video is brought to you by lynnode lynnote is a linux server provider that gn has used for years now for its own servers alongside dedicated hosting linux also makes it easy to cut out third-party vpn servers and to build your own vpn that you fully control doable through a few guided clicks in its interface linux has hundreds of guides for even more advanced server builds and with linux you can roll out your own services like plex and next cloud for your own media and file sharing services gamers nexus viewers get a 100 credit good for 60 days on new linux accounts visit leno.com gamersnexus or click the link in the description below so just like our best cpus roundup we published the goal of this type of content is to help people who maybe haven't seen every single case review we've done over the last year or two and also help people who go on hiatus and come back every couple years to build a new system and then take another break this is a roundup of the best cases in different categories so we have categories like best mechanical design best thermals best noise normalized thermals and some of these categories will explain a little bit in this content but you can always check our testing methodology pieces that are publicly available for case reviews if you're curious about how we do testing or what different aspects of testing really mean from the standpoint of a consumer and why each test is in there we won't be going as detailed with the numbers as we do with our individual case reviews but we'll still show several of the charts from various stages in the charts throughout the year if you want more detail on any particular case we would of course encourage you to check out the full standalone review on our channel to learn more about the the positives and the negatives of each one all that out of the way links are in the description below for all the cases and we'll link several the reviews as well let's get into the best cases of 2020. the first award is for best overall which factors price mechanical design thermals acoustics and build quality into the consideration but especially priced at performance we're giving this the lian lee 215 which we were actually neutral to positive about at launch but it has proven itself worthy over the rest of the year as the other cases have come out leon lee positioned the landcool 215 as its p400a killer we may not entirely agree with that the p408 digital is still a great case at 90 but the p400a won this award last year it got another mention in our mid-year case roundup for this year and now this award will go to the 215. the prophecy has been fulfilled the 215 diverges from lee and lee's traditionally high-end aluminum enclosures and instead it's closer to the recent lancole 2 and lancole 2 match designs as the name implies lee lee partnered with another company to produce this ultra budget steel and glass case with the express goal of getting the best possible airflow at the lowest possible price to achieve that the 215 comes with two 200 millimeter argb front fans a 120mm rear exhaust fan and a wide open mesh front panel the chassis isn't really built for such large intake fans to begin with and you can see that in the design and to some extent they're wasted but they still do a good enough job to put the two on five near the top of our cooling charts on a regular basis and performance was especially good in our noise normalized thermal testing where we set all the noise levels to the same for all the cases under test big fans are quiet by nature and they move a lot more air thanks to the larger hole this one is a little bit more obstructed than most since it's technically built for a smaller fan but it still works well the downside is that big fans tend to be lower pressure since however liane lee's front mesh isn't too restrictive the pressure wasn't much of an issue like you might see in an acrylic case in the past like the h500p acrylic front for example that pressure concern though remains a reason why you should avoid radiators behind those 200ml fans as a 70 budget category case we'd recommend the 215 primarily for less expensive builds that don't use a lot of liquid cooling the 200 millimeter fans aren't suitable to be paired with a radiator and replacing them defeats the purpose of buying the case to begin with we'd advise against the front mounted radiator for this one just because the 200mm fans won't line up well with standard radiator sizes and the pressure will be poured through them the front panel has no backing filter which we like because it benefits thermal performance but the interior of the case will need some attention and cleaning over time as a result thanks to the dust that can pass through even cases with filters need to be cleaned though so we don't consider this too much of a downside check out the review for more detail on this one because like any of the cases it does have some downsides the 215 isn't necessarily the highest scoring case in every test we've done so there are other winners for more specific categories like thermals later but it's a great case and an easy choice for best overall especially because of the price to performance combination the combination of good cooling good price and competent design at the price point make it this year's winner for best overall case the next award is for best mechanical design we assign this one based on build quality construction moving parts and how those parts fit together and the mechanics of the case fractal takes it for the mesh phy 2 and to some extent the meshfy 2xl that we haven't formally reviewed yet but we have tested internally fraxel's continued policy of including a bare minimum of stock fans with its cases meant that the meshify 2 didn't make waves in thermal testing out of the box but average temperatures were definitely in the acceptable range more impressive were the various positive design elements carried over from the defined seven as well as some of the new features unique to the mesh phy 2 like a removable filter instead of the foam layer that was built into the first gen mesh by cases there are tons of fan radiator and drive mounting locations in the mesh by 2. the entire front of the case can be reconfigured to hold drives for a total of 11 possible 3.5 inch drive mounts with the purchase of some extra drive trays and this alone is a unique point in 2020 where the focus on three and a half inch drive support has diminished other points of interest are the return of the fully removable fan mount at the top of the case the tool-less fasteners to hold in all the removable panels a hinged front door and molded plastic spacers on the top filter that support the top panel we hope to see more second gen meshify cases from fractal specifically a smaller less expensive case in the style of the original meshfyc but for now this one easily takes best mechanical design for the year we do however have some honorable mentions we have a couple of runners up in this category first is the leonle 011 mini which we've been doing some initial testing on and we might still publish a full review on before end of year this of course pens schedules for silicon for the next few weeks it's full of precisely manufactured components with tight tolerances it's designed around the ability to position small form factor boards higher or lower in the case for extra clearance in different locations the mechanical design is good especially in a functional sense but it's of limited usefulness to a lot of users beyond the initial arrangement our standardized case testing hardware is all atx and the o11 to atx compatibility feels a little bit forced it requires a bolted on motherboard tray extension and removing the ability to adjust the board position coupled with not allowing atx power supplies at all does make it sort of awkward to review with a standard atx bench it's a case caught between two categories it's small form factor in a sense but it's not small it fits some atx hardware but not especially well we don't dislike the mini but it would take a very specific build to make it preferable to a regular 011 dynamic or some other smaller case if you want a true small form factor the build quality is overall good so if you have a specific build in mind it's worth considering we'll try to work towards the review if we can unbury ourselves from gpus consoles and cpus corsair's 4000d airflow also deserves a small mention it's a simple clean looking case that did moderately well in thermal testing but it doesn't win in this category because its design is more aesthetic than it is mechanical it incorporates several small touches that go above and beyond what we'd expect from a 70 case like color matching the magnets on the top filter and an easily removable front panel and bezel the next one is for best budget case the corsair 4000d nearly takes this category but we typically try to stay as close to 50 as possible for best budget case we also scale the price up a little bit within reason if it nets a case that we think will last a lot longer and persist through multiple builds so when we say budget case our price range is 50 to 60 dollars if yours is lower that's fine but we have a base standard for quality that we like to maintain because we don't really like recommending disposable products that you just buy and replace later we're declaring the silverstone pharah r1 the winner of the budget category with one caveat although it's currently the cheapest case currently mentioned in this content at about 61. it only includes one stock fan which is a large part of why it's so inexpensive we're letting it slide here because many users already have their own fans or will choose to install a radiator that comes with fence this is not the successor to the silverstone rl06 that we wanted but our standardized fan testing revealed that the r1 can still hold its own with some real fans installed it still has a mesh front after all and once you add some fans it'll be a good performer this one would be a great option for someone with a few fans lying around users may want to strip the internal nylon filter out in order to slightly improve airflow but that decision should be carefully weighed since the filter is permanently bonded to the front panel there's no going back on that one the r1 is similar to last year's winner the cooler master nr600 it's bare bones the stock fans should be replaced or augmented and it's relatively cheap for a case that still maintains a base level of quality and can be used for another build again later the difference is that the r1 is almost 10 cheaper than the nr600 and in this category that matters this next category is for best out of the box thermals assigned to the best stock performers each year best thermals is one of the easiest categories to score among our competitors the winner in the cpu torture category is the lian li lancole ii mesh while the p500a digital from fantax has an advantage of about one degree in the gpu torture test the lancol 2 mesh definitely has the best balance between the two categories however and its gpu temperature average of 47 degrees above ambience in fire strike extreme stress testing with our test bench tied the p500a's result it's easy to understand what makes it perform so well too the leon lee lancole ii mesh has two 140ml front intake fans that are 1100 to 1200 rpm and a 120ml rear exhaust fan at 1400 rpm all of which work together to blast air through the interior of the case the lancole 2-mesh rgb is somewhat cheaper and comes with 3 120ml fans but that isn't the version that we tested so be careful make sure you check the listings and read them thoroughly before making a purchase there's a lot of small signifiers on all these cases this year like digital or rgb that could be the difference between a really good case and one that needs some work back to the one we reviewed though there's a heavily ventilated door beneath the hinge to glass side panel and additional fan mounts on top of the power slash route for drawing even more air into the body of the case the drawback of the lancoil 2 mesh is that the hinged doors the powerful fans the perforations in those hinged doors and the elaborate hard drive cage that's designed to accommodate a back plane for hot swapping all add up to make it more expensive than some of the other options on the list notably lee lee's own 2-1-5 buyers of this case should plan to make use of its stock fans because they're definitely included in that price you could always add more it's just at some point it feels like you should probably have some kind of use for the fans that are included next up is best and noise levels using the same criteria for this one as we did last year the winner of the best noise levels category is the case with the lowest noise level with fans at full speed except with fixed cpu and gpu fans of course and it also has to be a case that doesn't suck the p300a and fara r1 did very well in this test but only because both of those cases only ship with one stock vent which we view as a disqualifying feature since our reviews recommended adding fans that leaves the be quiet 500dx and the corsair 4000d as tide winners for this category normally we'd pick the one with better thermals but they're nearly tied in that regard as well so they can share this one we've already covered some of the positive aspects of the 4000d it looks good and it's taking care for color matching all the way down to the magnet color and its cooling performance is overall fine corsair's 4000d was a strong return for the company after a series of anemic case launches in the recent past the 500 dx is be quiet's first foray into high airflow cases and although the stock purewinds 2 fans aren't especially powerful the thermals are far better than any previous be quiet case that we've tested equite's case construction is routinely high quality and that holds true for the 500dx despite the fact that it's part of the budget oriented pure category the case lighting is smooth and less obnoxious than many rgb cases and the case's overall appearance is one of our favorites this year it includes almost none of the noise damping features that be quiet is known for other than the slow spinning fans so this case won't suppress an already noisy system that said cases with good ventilation tend to be quieter anyway since the cooling fans don't need to spin as fast with the one downside being a loss of suppression for higher frequency noises that however is afforded by the higher end to be quiet cases it's just that the base volume is higher for those at a given temperature both the 4000d airflow and the be quiet 500dx are deserving of this one again as a reminder we always take thermals into account so a completely closed box or a box with a few fans won't get this award from us even if it's technically the quietest you can always bring the fan speed down on a more open case and get better noise levels at the same thermals there is one other big quiet case that we just got in for review but we haven't started working on it yet so we don't know if it would be potentially deserving of this category typically though the cases that are more closed off and noise focus from being quiet are under performers versus the more open ones when you start noise normalizing or temperature normalizing them up next is best to noise normalized thermals for this one we're giving it to the phanteks p500a digital noise normalized performance is different from our purely thermal category because now we're setting all cases to equate the same volume then we're testing to see who has the most efficient cooling at a given volume this takes away the ability for the case to brute force the cooling performance and instead puts focus on design efficiency obviously the 500dx and 4000d are both strong competitors here as winners of the previous category but the overall winner for noise normalized testing is the phantax p 500 a digital two of lee lee's cases scored better in cpu temperature especially the lancool 215 with an exceptionally good average but the p500a had the best balance of cpu and gpu temperatures without exceeding 36 dba at 20 inches distance the fantax enthus pro 2 also came close with the lowest gpu temperature we've seen thus far at least in this test thanks to its height fans and the amount of open space in the bottom of the case the p500a's advantage like the two on fives comes from having multiple large relatively slow moving intake fans pulling air through an unrestricted front panel the p500a has a total of three 140mm intake fans which take up the entire front of the case and push tons of air while remaining quiet as usual mesh fronted cases top the chart in this category since even at reduced rpm the case fans are still more effective than they would be spending at maximum speed in a sealed noise damping box with the p500a we had to set the case fans to 50 speed to hit the threshold for the noise normalized to test below 900 rpm and thermals were still excellent check our review for more detail on build quality but to summarize the internals of the p500a are much closer to the enthus evolve x than they are to the p400a or the p300a we had little interest in the features that set the evolvex apart originally like dual system compatibility and sliding cable covers and our opinion on that subject hasn't really changed but the p500a digital is available for significantly less money and that makes it a good value this one isn't really an award and we're not committing to the case as being good we always have a lot more going on and there's never really a clean spot where we can do a best of roundup because we still have stuff getting reviewed we're working currently on the nr200p the leonle 011 mini the fraxel mastify 2xl and a couple other cases that won't get posted for a while in full out of all the many cases that we're working on behind the scenes the one that we're most interested in right now is the cooler master nr200p small form factor cases are generally a pain either they're so small that building in them requires assembling and disassembling the system multiple times or they're so large that there's hardly any point where you start looking at a difference between the larger so-called sff case and a mid tower and there isn't much of one the nr200p fits firmly into the first camp but it's also a cool case with some interesting features it comes with a tempered glass side panel which we'll ignore because it shouldn't include one and a ventilated metal side panel which is the correct one to use there are several different configurations that can be used but the one that we favor is installing a gpu horizontally so that it can pull air in from the bottom of the case and installing the two stock fans at the top of the case with an optional radiator mounted against the side panel we'd probably choose side intake and top exhaust in that configuration but the reverse could work too vertical gpu mounting is also a valid option here since the side panel is ventilated although it necessitates some creativity in cpu cooling the entire case can be disassembled into pieces making the nr200p moderately easy to build in versus some other sff cases we've worked with the front panel is just a decorative plate that can be used to contain or hide the drives small form factor case reviews are still on hiatus for us and we may never get around to writing an official review on the nr200p but it's a clever and well constructed case and we'll probably find a use for it at least internally the final award is for the best worst case there were many bad cases this year as every year and many that were declared the worst case that we'd worked on recently as the year goes on though the ascribed value of being the worst so far shifts and so many worst so fars will accumulate over time this category then is for the best worst so far case or the worst case that we worked on for the year so far although we have an msi case waiting in the wings to challenge this score the current title holder is the abco encore or abconcor ramsey's 780 case sent to us by brian of bps customs because he tricked us into taking his garbage because he hates us the abconcore case review accidentally got 1.1 million views on our channel so in that sense it's actually our favorite case but not because it's good the case is one of the hottest we've ever tested and yet it has 12 included fans among which are custom molded fans that not only increase cost but decrease the efficacy the case is a veritable oven for components and we remarked in our review that we cut some of the testing short because we didn't want to permanently damage our testing equipment the case is sold for around 250 usd if you can even find it and it claims it'll quote open the wind way presumably a cry for health because it's choking in its default state the metal to hole ratio on this case is sub-optimal in the now renamed r-780 but in the very least the glass could at least be useful as a cpu lapping surface and the metal could probably be melted down and mostly reused so that'll be it for this one then for best cases it's interesting because unlike silicon products cases really as long as the company keeps making it and selling it and as long as the price point remains competitive it's ultimately a metal box with some electronics in it although most of the electronics involved are fairly simple like fans so a metal box it's not like it ages the same way as the cpu does it can keep selling and for that reason we often talk about like the p400a and this one talk about cases that have been out for a little while that remain relevant today even though they're not technically a 2020 case they're still available in 2020 and still one of the the top recommendations or one of the best cases to consider now even though it's just metal and glass and simple electronics though cases do tend to advance a bit year over year you see a reduction in cost for things like rgb or for glass or even in some instances some of the mechanical design as the volume ramps for those more complex cases and so you do see a little bit of a shift in the market and typically stuff gets phased out and replaced but there are still several good ones out there obviously there are a lot more cases too that we haven't reviewed or haven't fully reviewed there's a be quiet one on the floor behind me that i'm not actually not even sure what the name is yet because we just opened it up actually the box is back there silent base 802. so we haven't reviewed that one yet because it just arrived there's the 11 mini that we talked about in here but we haven't formally reviewed it but we do have thermal numbers on it internally that we used to include it in this piece and uh there's more going on so there'll be more to talk about yet subscribe for all of that as always you can go to store.gamersnexus.net to help us out directly or patreon.comgamersnexus and check out the individual case reviews for more information we'll see you all next time you

Channel: Gamers Nexus

Views: 1,095,097

Keywords: gamersnexus, gamers nexus, computer hardware, best cases, best pc cases, best cases 2020, best computer cases 2020, best pc cases 2020, best gaming cases, best gaming pc cases, best pc enclosures 2020, best airflow cases 2020, high airflow cases 2020, best performance cases 2020, best noise levels pc case 2020, phanteks p500a, lian li lancool 215, lian li lancool 2 mesh, fractal meshify 2

Id: dhf97n0eqx4

Length: 23min 10sec (1390 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 26 2020