G.Skill Z5i
A case of two halves
THE G.SKILL Z5I is one of the best-looking cases we’ve seen in the last year or so. It would be easy for case manufacturers to fall back on those old tired design tropes, and make something generic. Those ageold cuboid utilitarian shapes are certainly efficient, but it’s hardly going to lead to a standout piece of art when it comes to thinking about a home for your next rig.
But the G.Skill Z5i is something else entirely. Its hinged curved tempered glass panels allude to the interior with subtlety and grace. The front I/O is a smooth sheet of brushed aluminum, bound into the rest of the aluminum frame, and littered with triangular perforations that run around and through the heart of the case itself, ensuring that airflow is plentiful. On top is a simple yet effective mesh vent, while the base is a surprisingly premium plastic composite, with integrated underglow RGB lighting, and G.Skill logo cutout, all of which is controllable via your motherboard.
There’s no denying that the Z5i is a bold design, the lines are sharp, the aesthetic exceptionally clean, and its premium materials and overall standing look to be near perfect. But does form come before function? Is it just a fraction too much for a company more at home building DRAM than designing the next showstopper?
Don’t get us wrong, the Z5i is internally and externally an outstanding piece of modern engineering. Inside, the case has a tri-chamber design. The left-hand side houses the motherboard and your SFX power supply, the right-hand side, the graphics card (and eventually every cable known to man), and at the rear of the unit lies an unfiltered perforated area, where you can mount up to a 280mm AIO, or two 140mm fans along with some 2.5-inch drives. A quick hop over to the Z5i’s product page showcases numerous animated videos detailing just how clean your build will look once complete inside. But there’s a problem, a big one, and it’s something that all those videos carefully sidestep. Cable management.
CROSSED WIRES
The sad fact is there’s not a lot you can do here when it comes to that part of our hobby. There are a few cutouts between that center panel separating the right and left compartments, allowing you to route cables from the motherboard to the GPU side of things, and you can hide some cables coming from the power supply itself, but that’s about it. You’re left to tuck things away around the back on your own.
That means hiding cables behind the graphics card or strapping them to the rear area near the cooler out of sight, and you just end up tying them to the frame in any way you can. This is a case that demands short custom cables at a minimum, and even then, you’re still going to end up in a bind. The cable management situation is so difficult to deal with, it completely alters how you build the PC entirely. It’s not something you can leave to the end, and tidy up after.
In our build, we ended up cable tying everything down to the main frame that we could, using spare cable ties that we had from previous builds, not ones included with the case itself (although G.Skill does provide you with some slightly annoying velcro-straps). After that, we installed the AIO, before doing some more cable management, before finally finishing up installing the GPU. There’s no wiggle room here whatsoever, and that’s a shame.
This is one of the best-looking cases we’ve seen for some time. Its cooling is top-notch (surprisingly), and from a material standpoint, it’s fantastic. But, if you can’t tick that box of ensuring your PC builder can easily manage their cables, then the design needs to go back to the drawing board. Its functionality lacks the finesse graced upon it by its own form. Sadly, it’s that stark contrast between the two elements of this design that makes the Z5i seem so jarring.
VERDICT 7 G.Skill Z5i
ZORDON Incredible aesthetic; impressive materials; great concept; good lighting.
LORD ZEDD Cable management; cable management; cable management.
$200 https://www.gskill.com