A Closer Look – Exterior
OK, so let’s kick things off with the CH160! And firstly, I love it, it immediately ticks the compact and cool box, which is exactly what I want in a mini-ITX case. The tempered glass window can often compromise on available airflow, but as you can see, virtually every other surface of this case is mesh, so I can’t see airflow and cooling being an issue at all.
The full mesh front panel will allow for massive amounts of passive airflow, but there’s room for a fan or two in there should you need to give the airflow some extra push or pull.
Down the side, there’s a handy I/O panel, not a big fan of the location here, but at least there’s a Type-C port for high-speed storage devices.
Around the back, you’ll find another fan mount, a heck of a lot more mesh for airflow and cooling, as well as a pair of PCIe expansion slots.
And ticking yet another ventilation box, there’s even more airflow on the left side towards the front, which you’ll need to get air to your front-mounted power supply.
The handle on top is awesome. It’s built into the case and is nice and sturdy, so you can carry your build around with confidence.
And there’s plenty more ventilation on the bottom of this case too, with some lovely padded feet giving it good ground clearance, and preventing it from scratching up your desktop.
Moving onto the CH170, it’s clear that both cases share a lot of ideas, and perhaps even a lot of components and tooling too. While the CH160 is horizontal, the CH170 is basically the same thing in a vertical form factor. It still has the same I/O panel, it has the same large mesh and ventilated panels too, but obviously, it’s stood on its end.
It’s slightly longer, but this is largely from the extra bit stuck on the bottom, as the GPU, PSU and CPU cooler support remains the same between both.
A major change is the bottom part, which features a large passthrough for all your cables, as the motherboard I/O is located under the case. This means you’ll have a much cleaner desktop build, with all the boring connector parts hidden out of sight.
The only major things that are missing are tempered glass and that handle, but honestly, it still looks great, and I can see the appeal of having more mesh airflow vs glass too, especially in such a compact case where cooling is vital for high-performance systems. But at the same time, the tempered glass is more aesthetically pleasing too.
