A case with tempered glass panel and compartment for unsightly PSU and drives all for under £50. I bought it for my build, but is it any good?
PRODUCT: MSI MAG Vampiric 010 Case
FROM: Amazon
COST: £49.99
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I’ll admit, the buying process for my case was visiting Amazon, searching for PC cases, sorting by price and scrolling past all the hideous ones till I found one I liked, then looking at the manufacturer’s website to see it’s features, I also half ass watched a video of someone building a pc in the case but honestly got bored and switched off half way though. Needless to say, nothing put me off buying it at under £50.
Cooling
Having little interest in overclocking, the airflow of the case is not paramount to me past ensuring I can get some airflow through the case which this case seems to do adequately. The case comes with a single 120mm ARGB fan, which is quiet enough, pre-fitted to the back of the case, and plenty of space for more fans, two 120mm or 140mm fans on top covered by a magnetic dust filter and another three 120mm or two 140mm fans on the front which sit behind the plastic front cover, If I’m honest, it could probably do with a mesh front rather than solid plastic to help with airflow as the air can only be drawn from the vents down each side of the front.
If you want to liquid cool your components, the case can accommodate up to a 240mm radiator on the top, or 360mm radiator on the front. Unfortunately to accommodate for a 360mm Radiator there is a big cut out in the bottom PSU / Drive cover which if I’m honest bugs me now I’ve got the case in front of me.
Access
Both the glass panel and the back side come off with thumb screws for easy access, both sets of thumbscrews have Philips screwdriver crosses so you can loosen the glass without creating too many grubby finger marks however the black coating on the screws scratch very quickly. Both panels remove and give good access to both sides of the case, In hindsight I would have loved the glass panel to be hinged for ease of access during smaller tasks like changing ram, rather than carefully placing it somewhere and hoping I don’t knock it over, I guess that’s a luxury you have to pay for.
There’s not a massive amount of space in the back behind the motherboard tray, an extra cm of clearance would have made a massive difference in cable management, as well as points where I could attach cable ties or vecro ties without them showing through the front side of the case, there are a couple of clips cut out of the motherboard tray but they are kinda flimsy. The room for the PSU was adequate however I would have loved a bit more room, or even if the hard drive tray was quick release so you could pop it out, install the psu and it’s cables without needing to angle it so much then pop it back in.
The front of the case pops off easily for fan installation and cleaning however the wires could be a little longer to make it easier to put it down while off, unfortunately it’s very hard to install fans in the front without hitting your motherboard or components with the screwdriver if you’re not installing them after your motherboard.
Drive Storage
There is room up back to mount two 2.5″ drives and they are very easily installed as they use a slot and screw bay that can be removed quickly for screwing the drives onto then just popped back on. The case also has a two bay hard disk tray that can be removed for more room in the bottom however the 4 screws holding it in are accessed from the bottom of the case and therefore a pit of a pain to get them outwithout laying the case on it’s side, retaining this bay could have been achieved with a slot and tab / thumbscrew combo similar to what is used for the 2.5″ trays which would have made it so much easier to install the PSU and cable manage,
I would have liked to permanently remove the bay as it’s not needed at the moment and would have given me much more room to cable manage, however it’s not really something I can consider as it makes the radiator cutout issue even more obvious and all the wires would be clearly visible from the front.
Front I/O
The case has a neat io panel at the front top of the case close to the power switch with contains 3 USB ports, 1 x USB 3.0 and 2 x USB 2.0, since both the USB headers on motherboards support 2 ports, I don’t know why they didn’t provide an extra USB 3.0 or even at worst 2x USB 3.0 and 1x USB 2.0. The Front I/O also has HD Audio / Mic connectors which are convenient.
Expansion Slots
There’s 7 slots for your PCIe expansion cards, but you have to break the covers off so you’ll have to buy additional covers if you no longer need to use a slot.
Looks & ARGB Light Effects
The case looks good, the tempered glass side panel is slightly smoked to really make the best out of the components and lights inside.
The Front panel could be better, it’s quite obviously plastic but the matt finish stops it from looking cheap, and the grey MSI Dragon logo is subtle. The light effects of the front strips can be changed at a touch of a button located on the top front of the case near the power button and can display a full range of colours and ARGB effects however they can’t be synchronised with your other lights through software, so you have to synchronise manually if you want to change and match with your system lighting setup. The included fan has a standard 5v 3 pin ARGB plug and will probably work in whatever software you throw at it, it also has a passthrough so you can daisy chain your ARGB devices together with is great.
Conclusion
The case has a lot of positives for the price, including a covered PSU / Hard disk section which is not common for a case of this price even if it does have the annoying cut-out to allow room for the larger radiator. While it could be better, the case allows for adequate cable management and component installation and looks great with it’s smoked tempered glass side panel.
Overall I’m happy with the case choice.