Join The Club
This year's Computex has followed the usual theme of oddball excess, and while that's perhaps not totally appropriate for today's climate, it does allow vendors to showcase something rather unusual. In the case of Montech's new PC case, though, the design is so oddball that I genuinely blinked and shook my head when I saw it.
At first glance, the F738 Pro just looks like a stylish mid-tower case, with the bulk of the chassis standing above a large base that houses the power supply. So far, so good, but what looks like a fixed set of slats on the front panel turns out to be shutters that you can rotate.
"Airflow in suspension," says Montech's tagline, and the idea appears to be this: If you want to reduce the level of airflow in your case, perhaps to reduce noise or maybe just because you don't need it, you can turn a knob underneath the front panel to swing the slats across and block off most of the intake area.
Perhaps Montech thinks it's just giving you a style choice or something, but the tagline and demonstrations we saw at Computex all point to it being purely to control airflow. But here's the thing: you can already do this simply by setting up an appropriate fan profile in the motherboard BIOS.
That's what I do with my own main PC, which comprises a Fractal Design North XL, with every fan in the chassis and AIO replaced with various Noctua models. Yes, these are already quiet to begin with, but I have them all set on different profiles such that the rig is practically silent with little airflow when doing light tasks (such as writing this very article).
For gaming, when things heat up, the fans kick up a notch or two (though not all of them) to ensure that the graphics card is kept as cool as possible, and when I'm compiling Unreal Engine builds, the profiles are such that the CPU is now the centre of cooling attention. It was all fiddly to configure, I grant you, but now that it's all set, I never have to worry about it.
Montech's design will have you reaching for the front panel every time you jump between light desktop work and gaming, which just seems…well…pointless. I know that's harsh, but you're surely not going to leave the slats fully shut for gaming when your graphics card is crying out for all the air it can grab hold of.
I will confess now that I may well have totally misunderstood the whole point and purpose, and if I have, I apologise to Montech. But if I haven't, I can't see the F738 Pro topping any part of our best PC cases guide. Fortunately, Montech does have a decent array of affordable cases to choose from, so give them a look instead, yes?
1. Best overall: Havn HS 420
2. Best budget: Phanteks G400A
3. Best midrange: Lian Li O11 Vision Compact
4. Best budget compact: Thermaltake S100 TG Snow Edition
5. Best high-end: NZXT H9 Flow RGB+
6. Best Mini-ITX: Fractal Design Terra
7. Best Micro-ATX: NZXT H3 Flow
8. Best full-tower: NZXT H7 Flow
9. Best pink: Hyte Y70
10. Best looking: Phanteks Evolv X2
11. Best for beginners: Be Quiet! Shadow Base 800 FX
