XPG Valor Mesh Compact Mid-Tower Case Review
Peter Donnell / 1 year ago
Complete System
As I said, this case is pretty compact, and that’s clear now that I’ve populated it with an ATX motherboard. It’s rather full in here from top to bottom. It does look great though, and if you’re after a more compact solution that doesn’t take up too much desk or floor space, this certainly ticks the right boxes without having to invest in an often more expensive or complicated mini-ITX gaming PC.
The cable routing is obviously basic, but it’s sufficient and cable runs are kept nice and short, with plenty of room to hide excess cables out of sight too.
There’s no vertical pass-through for the graphics card power cables, which is a shame, but it’s hardly a deal breaker. Once the glass is on and you step back, you’ll hardly see any cables really.
The GPU length is a limiting factor here, with the case only supporting up to a 305mm graphics card with the fans installed, and 335mm if you take an opposing fan out. Of course, that space would be lessened if you added a radiator to the front, which would leave something like 285mm of space! That’s fine for most modern AMD GPUs but the top RTX class cards from Nvidia are often massive.
CPU cooler height is decent though, at 166mm the largest air coolers would likely conflict with the glass, but any robust 120mm fan models should fit with ease. The case would support an AIO, but I think it would be pretty cramped to attempt. When a case has four pre-installed good-quality fans, I think it’s already well suited to air cooling and would be inclined to follow that path instead, but it’s nice to know you could upgrade to an AIO in the future too.
Overall, a clean, compact and surprisingly tidy-looking build. With the glass back in place, you can still see your hardware clearly, cables look tidy, and the front mesh design lets in loads of cool air, and looks great too, so what more could you ask for!?