Corsair Carbide 270R $70

$70 IS A FAIR amount of cash when building a budget rig. We usually recommend you try to save as much money as you can on parts—apart from your PSU, CPU, GPU, and RAM. After all, you won’t gain much from a case upgrade compared to those four components.

But if you’re looking for a cheeky cheap upgrade, nothing’s more satisfying than upgrading that old hunk of metal in which you house your precious hardware. Corsair’s Carbide 270R hits that mark perfectly. With a simple, elegant design, the 270R would look as at home in a bedroom as in a game dev’s studio. With support for up to three 120mm fans in the front, two 140mm ones in the roof, and four hard drives, it’s not that different from the more expensive Fractal Design Meshify.

It’s not perfect, but for the cash, you’d be hard pushed to find better than Corsair’s aggressively priced, budgetbusting box.