BitFenix Aurora

Time to get funky

CASE DESIGN has always been a challenging field for manufacturers to excel in. But that’s understandable—after all, the number of variables involved is vast. There’s material choice, build quality, internal layout, ease of access, included accessories, shape, size, price, and even logo and brand design. All of which affects how consumers view a case.

But, as more and more money is pumped into R&D labs across the case spectrum, the art has almost been perfected, to the point that innovating in this particular subsector of the industry has become unbelievably challenging. It’s not hard to find cases that look stunning for less than $100 now. Go back three or four years, however, and the chassis ecosystem was almost unrecognizable, with the only heavy-hitting top-sellers emanating from the foundries of Corsair and BitFenix.

So, here we are in 2017 with BitFenix’s latest Aurora chassis. This amalgamation of soft plastic, steel, and tempered glass certainly is eye-catching. The shape alone is enough to turn heads—not in a “wow!” kinda way, but more like that odd facial expression your dog gives you when you make a high-pitched whistle noise. The not-so-subtle curves cut out of the front and top exterior panels add a strange aesthetic to the tempered glass chassis, allowing plenty of airflow into the ventilated front panel, without being too obvious about it. There’s a subtle nod given to both the Prodigy and the Shinobi chassis that predate this aggressively designed case. Will it be to everyone’s fancy? Perhaps not, but the design does slowly grow on you.

The tempered glass panels, now commonplace in the industry, sit snug against the Aurora. The smoked side, which reveals all your internal components, cries out for solid internal lighting, while the rear panel is entirely blackened, retaining the look and feel of glass, without showing off the undoubtable mess of cables you have tucked away in the back.

That aside, the chassis as a whole follows BitFenix’s traditional aggressive modular design. Both of the 3.5-inch drive bays are entirely optional, with the upper cage mimicking a 5.25-inch cage, easily removable with the release of four separate screws, one on each side, and two in the front. IT’S A TRAP! There’s no hint of a PSU cover just yet from the German manufacturer, but that’s not to say the Aurora is devoid of features. The two recessed radiator mounts located in the front and the roof of the chassis are neat little additions, adding a little extra room, and helping to show off your fans through the case window. The support for full E-ATX motherboards, coupled with three 2.5-inch bays, is nice as well. And we also have to mention the oddity of the frontfacing LED SSD mount. It's Asus Auraready, so that if you want your SSD to light up the same color as your motherboard, you can do that…. Yeah.

All in all, it’s an intuitively designed chassis, coming in at a respectable $100. It’s not the most modern out there, nor does it offer the most features, but it’s well rounded and provides a solid base for any PC builder. It does have its flaws, however—we wish the soft-touch finish, often associated with BitFenix cases, had made its way to the Aurora, and that there was an integrated PSU cover. The design is also a little outlandish, but in an industry that’s struggling to define itself outside of six rectangular panels, we can easily understand that. –ZAK STOREY