Look, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so what constitutes attractiveness is truly subjective. No argument there. But have you ever looked at a steaming pile of dog turd and thought to yourself, 'Wow, what a beautiful pile of shit!'? Probably not, but then again, someone at Antec at one point looked at the proposed design for its new open frame Torque computer case and said, 'Wow, what a beautiful...chassis, make it happen!' And so they did.
Maybe you like the design too. Hey, more power to you. The consensus around these parts is that it's interestingly unique, which is a nice way of saying it hurts our eyeballs. It's far removed from cases like Antec's P110 Luce or even the flashier Nine Hundred, which looks like absolutely tame by comparison. In any event, Antec is pretty proud of this thing, as evidenced in this short promo:
Looks aside, the Torque is comprised of "14 precisely cut aluminum panels in high contrast crimson and titanium." Both sides sport a 4mm tempered glass panel. As you can tell from the pics, it's not an enclosed case—it's an open air design, with Antec promising "vast airflow." There's space for three 120mm fans in the front and three more up top. Alternately, users can install up to a 360mm radiator in the front or top.
Surprisingly, the case only offers up two drives bays, one 2.5-inch and one 3.5-inch. Most new motherboards these days ship with at least one M.2 slot, but even without it, there's room for a fast SSD to tackle primary storage chores and a bulkier HDD for overflow. Beyond that, you'll need an external drive, or cloud storage.
The press release pegs the price at €379; Scan Computers has it available to preorder for £349.99.
