Chieftec Stallion 3 GP-03B-OP ATX Case Review
Peter Donnell / 3 years ago
Interior
With the side panel removed, you can see that the interior is pretty spacious. The case will handle an E-ATX motherboard, so it’s a little longer from front to back to accommodate this. The added benefits of that are that it’ll support extremely long graphics cards too, so I don’t think there are any on the market that would struggle for space in here.
The case has cable routing holes above the motherboard, but the ones you’ll see, such as those on the right of the motherboard and below it, have been equipped with some rubber grommets.
There are two sets of grommets here, as the first row on the left will likely be obstructed by wider E-ATX motherboards. It’s a simple thing, but it shows that some thought has been put into the case for multiple configurations.
In the front, you’ll find three gorgeous 120mm Tornado fans of Chieftecs own design. Of course, you could easily replace them with fans of your own, or anything up to a 360mm radiator.
There’s another 120mm fan in the rear, and just like the front fans, they’re all pre-wired into the RGB hub and ready to rock.
The PSU shroud is nice and robust, and will certainly help hide all your excess cables easily enough.
Interesting, there’s a sliding rail here, allowing you to move the vertical bar. You can then also use the vertical adjustment to change the height of the support bar. You can move it to suit different size expansion cards, and it’ll prevent graphics card sag.
At the rear of the case, you’ll see all of the expansion slots are fitted with reusable ventilated metal covers, not cheap snap-off ones, which is nice.
With the right-side panel removed, you can see there’s quite a lot going on behind the motherboard. There’s a decent amount of space back here for cables, but it’s not excessive. Keep in mind though, that the PSU shroud will allow you to cram all the excess cables out of sight anyway.
There are cable tie loops dotted around, so you’ll be able to strap down unwieldy cables to keep things looking neat and tidy.
All the fans are pre-wired to the included hub. As you can see, it’s a nice little thing, and even comes with a set of controls on it should you need them.
One thing I’ve never seen in any case are these lovely slide-in SSD mounts. The brackets are removable, but you won’t need to do that. You just slide the drives in from the right and they click in; these are really cool.
However, there are two more traditional metal brackets right behind the motherboard.
Below the PSU shroud, there’s a removable HDD bracket, which will support 2 x 3.5″ drives (tool-free) or 2 x 2.5″ drives with the included screws, giving you plenty of storage options overall.
Finally, one small but welcome feature is that all the mounting hardware, cables, headers, etc, are all finished in black, which should keep the final build looking smart.