THE CONCLUSION

SO, THIS WAS AN experience, to say the least. At first glance, the G.Skill Z5i is a beautiful-looking thing, with curved panels, brushed aluminum, intuitive lighting, and a fantastic premium feel, all for a reasonable price ($200). But the reality is once you get under the covers and start tinkering with the build, the problems just start to spring up.

Are we happy with this build? In a way yes, it fills the brief of building in this chassis, we got it done, in time, with all the hardware we brought to the table without any swaps. But deep down, it’s not one we’re proud of. It was frustrating to deal with, and the lack of consideration for some of the basics of decent case design resonates quite badly, especially when you do this every day.

“Enough complaining! What would make this case better, Zak?” This chassis is ITX by design, and I know there is a subset of the PC building community that despises large ITX cases, but if I were designing version 2.0, I’d make it slightly taller and wider. Taller to accommodate a 360mm radiator in the rear, and wider to incorporate a smart form of cable management between the GPU and motherboard tray area.

I’d tidy up the internal layout, especially that rear ventilated aluminum area that the radiator sits in. Giving that a cleaner design with obvious mounting locations for the 280/360mm radiator would be top of my agenda. I’d also add an extra 120mm fan mount located on the back of the interior separator that could feed the GPU with cool air pulled from that radiator location, and then let convection channel the heat up and out. Lastly, I’d drop the smoked effect from the windowed panels. Seeing more of the inside would bring attention to both the GPU and the motherboard, and with that cablemanagement plate in position between the GPU and mobo compartment, you’d worry less about cable clutter showing. Only then would I consider this a 9 out of 10 or higher.

Outside of our mission to get a system built in this, however, there’s no doubt that, for a first case, G.Skill is on the right track. As we’ve said in the past, if you want to break into this market, and capture some sales from the likes of Corsair, Phanteks, NZXT, Fractal, and Lian-Li, you need to bring a flawless product to the table. Right now, the Z5i feels like a concept car. It looks awesome, it has that flying steering wheel, and cameras for wing mirrors, but in reality, it’s impractical to use, and that’s the problem.

We worry that if this case performs poorly, G.Skill will sack off the division and investment entirely, despite all the hard work that’s been put in. It needs a version 2.0, because with some slight tweaks to the design and improvements to the airflow, this thing could be an absolute behemoth of a chassis that takes the fight to the big guns.

In hindsight, going for a bigger radiator, and re-orienting the CPU block in software, would have led to a cleaner build here. Additionally, some decent RGB fans here would help add some light to the interior of this very smoked-out chassis. Custom sleeved cables, cut to a specific length should mitigate the vast majority of your cable management problems, although it’d still be a mess. Again, this case really needs some form of cable management solution in the rear. Wedging them all behind the graphics card just isn’t a sensible idea.