Review: Classy mid-tower chassis from server maker
The Supermicro S5 gaming chassis with its red coloured lines and brushed aluminium front looks classy.
Supermicro is better known for its server business, but it appears that company has decided that 2015 is a great year to launch a gaming line. The company started with some computer cases which included the Supermicro S5 model and also launched a few gaming motherboards.
Exterior
The Supermicro S5 with its red color lines and brushed aluminum front looks polished and classy. The company used a high-quality brushed aluminum finish that is visualy appealing. The top of the front of the chassis includes two USB 3.0 ports, a headphone port and a sound microphone port. A reset button and on/off button and also on case's front panel. All ports and buttons ease to access from any direction.
The chassis include a pop-out panel at the bottom containing a dust filter and a pair of fans. The filter covers two 120mm fans which can be upgraded to 140 mm in case you need more airflow.In our test, the two 120mm fans did a great job.
The top and bottom of the chassis have magnetic dust filters which are easy to remove. This is practical for cleaning, as computer case will get dirty, especially when sitting on the floor.
The right side of the chassis is fully closed to hide all cables, but on the left there are mounts for two 120mm fans or one 140mm fan. The back of the case includes a standard ATX opening with a 120 mm fan mounted. There is an opening on the bottom for two coolant line passages. One might need this for the water-cooling which would fit this case well.
Seven PCI-E slots have openings for expansion cards are available on the back of the chassis. You will need one or two for a graphics card. The maximum GPU length depends on whether the dedicated 2.5" drive cage is installed. When the additional 2.5 inch drive cage is installed the maximal GPU length is 320mm, without the cage graphics card length can be up 420mm.
The combination of red plastic and brushed aluminum on front does get your attention. The black matte colour on sides is nothing fancy, but in this combination looks all right. I need to mention that on some models of chassis you can see bare metal inside, but our chassis was painted black inside too. Personally it looks much nicer when the inside is also painted in black.
