Yes, the front and top panels, in addition to popping off easy and being poorly designed for "high airflow", are very cheap/flimsy. It's apparent they took an existing chassis, this one has mounts and screw holes it's parts can't use, and Frankenstiened these other parts onto it just to trade on the HAF name.

Hmmm, I reviewed on Newegg where I bought it. I don't see where I can review it here. Checking those reviews on Newegg, and it's funny how many clueless people there are out there. Either bashing Gamers Nexus, going as far as to claim GN was lying in their review. Or complaining about a lack of RGB controller, even though Cooler Master is the only RGB fan manufacture to design fans that don't require a controller.

If you use things like Corsair or NZXT RGB fans, they require their special RGB controller of the same brand. Some of them will work with one specific type of motherboard software, usually ASUS. But Cooler Master designed their RGB fans to work with nearly every major motherboard manufacture's built in RGB software. Gigabyte, ASUS, ASRock, MSI, it works with all of them.

Including an RGB controller just drives up the cost of the case. If the fans work without one, it's a waste of money to force everyone person who buys a case to pay for one. The included 200mm RGB fans even come attached to a 3 way splitter, which allows you to connect a 3rd RGB device without having to buy you're own splitter.

CM does sell their own RGB controller, and it's the least expensive RGB controller on the market too. Corsiar and NZXT controller are both far more expensive. RGB is the one thing CM has done right, and they've done it better than any other brand. Some people may like the looks of the RGB implementation on other fans, but CM has the best and least expensive execution out of any of them.

I bought the board for the extra features I wanted, and the looks. Yes a cheaper Gaming Ultra board will perform just as well, but this is what I wanted.

Yes, I exchanged some Tweets with GN about the exact dimensions and the filter he used. Sadly he's never named the exact filter and all the ones I've found are the wrong size. The front needs a 16x7 inch filter, but the closest I've found is 18x7. Not sure how well modding the filter will work to keep the edges clean.

I absolutely love the Gaming 7. Unless you need built in wifi, and I feel sorry if you do, you're better off saving the $30 with the Gaming 7 over the Maximus X Hero. The boards are comparable in most of their features, and benchmark wise their only differences came down to the ASUS boards enabling Intel MCE under the auto/default settings without telling the user.

Which was wrong of them and several reviewers called them out for it. Reviewers raised enough of a stink over it that ASUS is changing their BIOS because of it. Jayztwocents also posted a rant about how terrible the ASUS Aura Sync software is. It nearly bricked his system it's so bad.

The only minor complaint I have about the Gigabyte board is it has USB power saving disabled by default. While that doesn't sound bad, it meant that my keyboard or mouse would power themselves up, including their lights, if I accidentally pressed one of their keys while the system was fully shut down. It didn't boot the whole system up, it's not power on by keyboard or anything like that, but the system would keep the full voltage running to all the USB ports, even with the system off.

It's useful if you're someone who uses something like a wireless mouse that you want to charge while the system is off. But with all my devices being wired, it was just annoying to have to unplug my keyboard if I touched it wrong while the system was off. But it's an easy setting in the BIOS to change.

The gaming 7 also has 5 USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports on the back, compared to the Maximus X Hero which has just 4, but has 2 USB 2.0 ports instead of that 5th 3.1 port. Both have a single 3.1 Gen 2 and USB type C port on them.

I forgot to mention that the on board AMP for the Gaming 7 absolutely works. I don't have a overly difficult headset to drive, an original HyperX Cloud, but it's certainly not the easiest. I can definitely hear a difference compared to my 6+ year old ASUS board. Several companies boast offering on board AMPs and DACs these days, but I can say first hand the Gigabyte one works.

I'm not even using the included SoundBlaster software. But the AMP is certainly providing more power, allowing the headset to be even louder than before. I have my volume levels at a fraction of what they were with my old board. It's almost too loud, before I got everything set properly I had the audio from one video produce so much bass that the drivers displaced enough air to lift the cans off my ears slightly.

No, I do not have triple 140's across the top, though I have considered it. I'm still playing around with the optimal airflow set up. You can mount triple 140's up there though, no matter what radiator you use, so long as the fans are mounted above the radiator. The rad then just mounts to the two 140's that are towards the front of the case.. The top of radiators are all designed so there is no obstruction at the top that interferes with additional fans on that side. You just can't mount the rad on the top rear most fan as the rad will hit the rear exhaust fan for the case.

One thing I have changed is I've set the rad to exhaust. While this does result in slightly warmer CPU temps, it does not increase GPU temps at all like setting it to intake did. With how GPU boost works, the GPU will reduce clocks based on temp, basically anything over 50c and the highest boost clock it can achieve will start to decrease. My 1080 FTW2 can hit 2012MHz, but stablizes in the 1970-1987MHz range under load around 60-65c.

By having the CPU rad set to intake, the GPU temps pushed closer to 70c, decreasing my boost clock further. A CPU doesn't ever change it's boosted speed unless you hit the actual thermal limitation of the chip. So a 5c warmer GPU lowers my FPS, but a 5c warmer CPU does not.

I have not gotten it yet, but I will be investing in some black weather stripping to fix the gaps in the case to keep dust out now that pressure in my case is more neutral than it is positive. If I can find the right sized dust filter I will also be doing the mesh mod on the front panel that Gamers Nexus did. He still hasn't said what case he got that filter out of, and all the replacement filters I found online are the wrong size. I can go bigger, but cutting one down to size won't be clean like his mod was.

Lastly, since I do have that rad set exhaust now, it is pushed up to the front to be as close to the front intake as possible.

Cold hard facts are "ridiculous"? The $249 8600K beating the twice as expensive 1800X is "ridiculous"? I paid very close attention to Ryzen prices and performance all those months I was waiting for Coffee Lake to release. I was very close to buying a 1700, but since the current, at the time, 7700K beat it so easily, I held my ground and waited to see Coffee Lake performance and pricing.

Hell, the 8400 outperforms the 1800X across most titles. Ryzen has it's place. Even in the area's Ryzen was previously beating Intel, streaming or production workloads, Coffee Lake has either eliminated that gap or surpassed it. Hardware Canuks recently had a great video on exactly that. Dimitry loved his Ryzen rig that he built for editing, but 8700K was able to beat it in CPU rendering. He does note that the Ryzen machine, while slower in rendering times, is better able to handle him doing something else on the system while the render is running due to the extra cores/threads on Ryzen. But the fact remained the same that the 8700K was faster for the production work loads.

This is just one set of benchmarks specifically comparing Coffee Lake, and the 7700K, to the 1800X. Despite the better chips, Intel, getting held back at the higher end by the worthless Vega 64, the Intel chips still very easily beat the 1800X. https://www.techspot.com/review/1505-intel-core-8th-gen-vs-amd-ryzen/page3.html

It's performing well, IMO. Idle/Load temps are subjective. I have a 5GHz OC on my 8700K, but it does not seem to be a very good chip lottery wise. The voltage I need for that 5GHz is higher than what I've seen other people reporting. But that could also be due to something I don't have dialed in correctly with my OC.

I also don't disable speed stepping, keep my CPU at it's full clock speed 24/7 is not something I've ever felt the need to do. Generates too much heat, and I have a high ambient temp already of around 27c. That ambient temp will get better as winter rolls in, but it's impact is limited by the poor airflow on the H500P.

On the subject of that poor airflow, I have finally found the correct mesh filter to perform the "meshify" mode that Gamers Nexus performed. It's the top dust filter for a Fractal Define S. It's the perfect 16x7 to replace the current center acrylic pane on the front panel.

All that said, true idle temps, if I walk away and allow it to stabilize is 30-35c depending on the room ambient. Under load, and these are gaming numbers as stress test or rendering numbers don't matter as I don't run them every day, are in the 55-68c range depending on what game I'm playing and the ambient temp. If I'm running my local 7 Days to Die server, I can hit 73c after a while.

But that's a poorly optimized game with the additional load of running the server I'm playing on at the same time. If I'm underground, without a lot of objects to render off in the distance, it drops drastically.

For reference I allow the EVGA Flow Control to do it's thing and adjust the pump and fan speeds based on the default curve. Which is fairly aggressive. I also replaced the stock thermal paste on the CLC 280 with some Arctic MX-4. That absolutely helped, not much but it does perform better.

This is unrelated to temps, but I am also playing with different weather stripping around TG panel to seal the gap there.

I don't like to make recommendations base on my personal temps, because my temps aren't tested in a controlled manner like a professional reviewer like Gamers Nexus does. I will say it has performed well with my 8700K clocked at 5Ghz, and performing the mesh mod on my H500P helped with that even more.

If you look at the GN review, the CLC 280 out performed the H115i at both max fan speed and at lower noise normalized fan speeds like 1500rpm. Not by much but there was a performance different. That likely comes down to different fan design. While the EVGA fans are odd with their scooped out walls, they do seem to be higher quality fans than what Corsair includes with their H115i.

The H115i is cheaper at the moment, but the CLC 280 goes on sale all the time. I got mine for under $100. The main reason I went with the CLC 280 is I already owned my 1080 FTW2 and wanted to be able to sync the RGB lighting.

But when it comes down to it, all of these AiOs perform similar enough that the 1-3c difference at equal fans speeds won't actually matter in the end. It comes down to aesthetics, extra features like RGB, and brand loyalty.