Product Reviews

When you're building a budget PC, it's tempting to buy the cheapest case you can find. This might make financial sense, but many of the really cheap cases are a nightmare to build, rickety when complete and leak a lot of noise. Gigabyte's GZ-X1 shows that you can get a low-cost, high-quality case that looks as if it cost a lot more.

The GZ-X1 is available in black or silver. The front is uncomplicated but looks smart and neat. For such an inexpensive case, we were pleased to see that a flap covers the top 51/4in drive bay. This means you don't need to buy an optical drive with a bezel that matches the case colour. A button on the front of the flap pushes through to the optical drive's eject button, and a clear plastic panel lets the drive's access light shine through. Standard blanking plates cover the remaining three 51/4in drive bays, and you remove and discard these when you want to plug in other peripherals. There are also two external 31/2in drive bays with removable blanking plates. This gives you enough room to fit a floppy disk and a memory card reader.

Finally, the brushed metal flap at the bottom of the case hides the two front USB2 ports, plus FireWire, headphone and microphone ports. It feels well built, and the hinges don't feel as if they'd ever break.

There's little in the way of instructions, but building a PC into

ADVERTISEMENT

the GZ-X1 should not be a problem as it's easy to take apart. By removing a few thumbscrews, you can slide both side panels off. There's plenty of room to slide in a motherboard and Gigabyte provides the necessary risers, although you need to screw them into place according to the position of your motherboard's screw holes.

There's loads of room for drives, too, with five 31/2in internal drive bays in addition to the two external and four 51/4in bays. Surprisingly for a cheap case, the GZ-X1 doesn't require any screws, as plastic clips hold the drives in place. The internal drive bays have two clips, one for each side of the drive, but the external bays have clips only on one side. This is presumably to save money and because the front bezel will help keep external drives steady. Even so, we'd have preferred to see clips on both sides. The expansion card slots are held in place by a hinged bracket that also has no screws. You'll need to snap out a slot's blanking plate to install a card. It's good to see Gigabyte has rounded off the metal inside the case, as this means you're unlikely to cut yourself on any sharp edges.

Two 120mm fans are provided, which attach to a splitter cable that plugs into a single motherboard three-pin header. They're not silent, but they're fairly quiet, and most of the noise is caused by moving air. There are no fan speed controls, but you could replace the fans with others that have them, or install a fan controller. If you're building a low-power PC and you really want to cut down on noise, you can even unplug one.

The GZ-X1 isn't perfect and doesn't make for the quietest PC ever. However, its tough, well-constructed interior, screwless design and tons of drive bays make it an excellent budget choice. If you can spend a little more, Coolermaster's Centurion 5, which is slightly better built, costs around £43. For those on a tight budget, though, Gigabyte's GZ-X1 is excellent value.