Sharkoon REX8 Value Chassis Review

This chassis was never designed to set the world on fire with awesome features, it was set to be a versatile and cost-effective solution for the middle market system builder, home user and casual gamer and that is exactly what it delivers. This is a budget chassis, there is no hiding that fact and while there are cheaper cases on the market, the sub £30 tin cans that rattle and buzz when you start your PC don’t really qualify as competition. The Rex 8 Value is in that sweet spot that offers good quality for very little money.

It was built with value in mind and while that isn’t a bad thing, given that not everyone in the world has the budget for a £100+ super chassis for their system and the market needs accessible and affordable products like the Rex 8 Value, but that does come with a few minor draw backs that while not exactly deal breaking, should be noted by more experienced system builders. Things like the side panels, which are rather thin, now this isn’t an issue if you don’t plan on removing them every other day but that could be bent out of shape if you’re a little ham-fisted. The thin panels won’t do wonders for sound proofing either, although I don’t feel this chassis is any noisier than anything else within this price range.

The stock fans are of a reasonable quality, featuring LED lights that do add a touch of style and life to the chassis, but as with most pre-installed fans, they aren’t the best quality around and it wouldn’t hurt to invest in a pair of high quality, silent fans to improve your overall build, if that is within your budget of course.

Next up is the cable management, it’s always great to have cable management as it not only makes your system look presentable around the front but it can also work wonders for air flow within the chassis and make general cleaning and maintenance a lot easier. The cable management here however results to just being an area to cram your cables out of the way and I had little luck getting anything organised behind there, tending to just try squeeze the side panel on instead. I won’t mark the chassis down for this though as all my cables did “fit” and the end result of the build still looked great.

Dust filters are important to keep clean and the filter under the PSU will require you to get under your chassis to clean, this could be an inconvenience dependent on how dusty your environment is.

While that might sound like enough to put you off a purchase, that really shouldn’t be the case. Given the price of this chassis is only £50 it’s a highly capable design, I still managed to get a large CPU water cooling block in there, with room for an SLI system, plenty of room for both optical drives and HDDs, six USB ports on the front panel and it looks good too, if you’ve just gone and spent all your money on a big graphics card and have little cash left for the chassis, the Rex 8 Value won’t leave you disappointed.