It's becoming increasingly clear that you're absolutely nobody at the Computex show this year if you haven't got a panoramic goldfish bowl in your booth. However, newbie case specialist HAVN has gone one better than the competition with its new HS 420.
What most, if not all, of the alternatives in the panoramic case segment share, including the Corsair 3500X we featured earlier today, is a two-piece glass construction. Basically, two sides of the case are glass panels, and each of those two panels is a separate sheet of glass.
Not the HAVN HS 420. It has what HAVN is calling Unisheet Heatformed Glass. Put simply, it's a single sheet of glass with a right-angle bend. No seams, no joins, just one large sheet of glass for the front and side panels. What's more, the bend in the glass has been designed with as small a radius as possible, to reduce visual distortion.
The case measures 541 x 260 x 547 mm (21.3 x 10.2 x 21.5 inches) and supports up to E-ATX motherboards. You get 480 mm of clearance for graphics cards and 185 mm of CPU cooler accommodation. Meanwhile, there's space for three 420 mm radiators and you can fit a total of eleven 140 mm fans. It's also a dual-chamber design for optimal GPU cooling.
Along with the wrap-around glass, the HS 420 has a pretty neat, minimalist design with some unusually shaped vents on the rear and non-glass side of the chassis. It definitely has its own unique look—kitted with some clear-coloured custom water cooling, it looks very clean indeed.
The chassis looks well-engineered with some nice, tight shutlines between the panels. Overall, it looks like a high-quality bit of kit.
There's also a version of the case with vertical GPU mounting known as the HS 420 VGPU. If you're wondering who HAVN is, it's a new brand from Pro Gamers Group said be be staffed by former Fractal, NZXT, Wistron and Corning bods. The brand has a website, but it's so new it appears to still be in launch mode with few product details.
The HS 420 is their first release and for now, there's no word on pricing or launch dates. Here's hoping we can get our hands on one soon to see if it performs as well as it looks.
