There's nothing like a gaming and tech expo to show just how behind the curve you are. At least, that was how I felt coming away from Gamescom last week. Perhaps [[link]] surprisingly, though, what made me feel most like this was seeing all the new PC cases, whether they were part of pre-builts or standalone.
Case in point was the Corsair Air 5400. Our Jacob Ridley covered this case back at Computex. [[link]] It essentially splits the chassis into three very distinct chambers: one [[link]] for the main components, one for the CPU AIO, and one for the PSU and cables.
Apart from the more 'experimental' (let's say) parts of this build, the bulk of it isn't revolutionary for 2025. It's far from the only case to have a completely separate chamber for the power supply, for instance—just ask the Havn HS 420 VGPU or Asus Prime AP202.
While dual-chamber designs aren't new, triple-chamber ones like this one are. We've seen it with the humongous Geometric Future 9, but it's very much a circa 2025 phenomenon. And here's me with my shroudless Fractal Design Define R4, a case so old that I can't even find an official product page for it. Dual-chamber designs still seem pretty snazzy to me, so consider me mildly shook by triple-chamber ones like this.
Apart from the Air 5400's clever cooling gubbins, what impressed me was how easy it seemed to be to open it up and shimmy things about. Andrew Ditchburn, the Corsair rep showing me this case, was fitting and unfitting parts left, right, and centre with surprising deftness.
Give me 20 minutes and a screwdriver and I might be able to approximate the same with the R4… kinda.
All this makes me a little more excited for my next full build, whenever that might be. Probably the least favourite part of PC building, for me, was getting everything aligned and screwed into the case and looking just… okay, at the end of it. Heck even the best budget PC case, the Phanteks Eclipse G400A has a PSU shroud. Oh how times change.
1. Best overall: Havn HS 420
2. Best budget: Phanteks G400A
3. Best midrange: Hyte Y40
4. Best budget compact: Thermaltake S100 TG Snow Edition
5. Best high-end: NZXT H9 Flow RGB+
6. Best Mini-ITX: Fractal Design Terra
7. Best Micro-ATX: NZXT H3 Flow
8. Best full-tower: NZXT H7 Flow
9. Best pink: Hyte Y70
10. Best fish tank: Lian Li O11 Vision Compact
11. Best looking: Phanteks Evolv X2
12. Best for beginners: Be Quiet! Shadow Base 800 FX