ASUS RoG STRIX Helios Case Review

Complete System

Talk about dark and mysterious! The interior of this chassis really is huge, and the silky smooth black paintwork just looks fantastic. Our ASUS motherboard and ASUS GPU blend in with ease, with just the RGB showing off a few highlights.

There’s certainly enough room in here for a huge set of expansion cards. Of course, our single GPU configuration here is easy work for the chassis. The cable routing is fantastic too, with that vertical pass-through allowing cables to reach the GPU with ease.

Cooling

Even the biggest air coolers on the market would fit with ease, no doubt about that. However, there’s excellent clearance all around too, so radiators in the rear or top of the chassis are unlikely to conflict with the motherboard. Of course, you should still measure twice before you order extra components.

Up in the front, there’s a staggering amount of space for radiators and other custom loop hardware. Personally, I think this chassis does just fine with air cooling though. Those four premium quality 140mm fans provide a lot of airflow. Plus, with the built-in fan controller, you have quiet performance or big cooling performance just a button press away.

With no obstructions, you get clean airflow from front to back with positive air pressure by default, which should help reduce unwanted dust. Plus, all intakes are filtered too, so your system will run pretty clean and cool overall.

Cable Management

Of course, the cable routing looks fantastic, in the sense that you can barely see any at all in the system. With the PSU mounted under that full-length shroud and all the storage hidden out of sight, you never need to worry about it.

Overall, a fantastic looking build, right? But wait, there’s more!

With dual tempered glass windows, there’s always a fear that cable routing will be visible behind the motherboard, but not on this chassis.

There’s a dark plastic cover towards the front that you can’t really see through the glass. However, it hides all the cables really well. Sure, you can see our motherboard 8-pin cable here, but that had more to do with the max length of the cable I used, not the chassis.

It’s a really clever design though, and gives you both the benefits of a solid side panel, as well as the symmetrical look of dual tempered glass.

Dazzle me!

Aura Sync RGB is built into the front panel, but not how you would think. The fans are not RGB fans, they’re not even LED fans. However, light bars are built-into the glass surround on the front panel. The panel has then been laser engraved with this incredible ASUS pattern. It looks nice when the lights are off. However, power up, and the light shines through the edges of the glass and illuminates the pattern. It’s pretty damn cool.

Using the RGB button on the chassis, you can cycle it through various effects and colours, or even just turn it off if you wanted. Of course, if you have Aura Sync on your other hardware, it’ll match up with your motherboard, GPU, even your keyboard and mouse lighting. Now that’s what I call cool!

I don’t like big flashy RGB lights on my chassis, and that’s why I love this. It looks fantastic, but it doesn’t bathe my room in a wall of RGB like you would get from RGB fans. It’s more subtle and tasteful, while still being a bit of a spectacle in its own right.

Overall, it’s a much more unique and beautiful looking chassis than I expected. For something so brutally over the top, it manages to feel refined and practical. Not an easy thing to pull off.