Every PC fan knows they need the right case for their fresh build and the variables that need to be satisfied appear endless – we are here today to help some of you with making some of those decisions. It seems with the eruption of RGB, looks and aesthetics have overtaken almost every other consideration – well, this F15 G from Gamemax has that covered out of the box. And with a remote control option, it is super easy to sort out, too.
We’ll look at more of this a little later. We suggest if you are starting out, ease of build is the most important bit to get right when it comes to sourcing a new case, and Gamemax has done that so well with their F15 G. They do like to use macho names for their cases like Abyss, Black Hole, Aero, Commando, Predator and Kamikaze. Look past these cheesy names and you will find an enviable range, mostly in the £70 range here in the UK, which is around $80 or $90 US. Heaps of style and colour seems to have been their mantra at the design stage. But they are good. No sharp edges on our F15 and acres of space inside for motherboards right up to the rarely used Extended ATX. An ITX will look a little bizarre though in that black cavernous interior. There is also room for a proper water loop if you are so inclined. Even around the back, there appears to be plenty of space for just about anything.
So, let’s get some of the basic specs out in the open. The case itself is 215mm wide, 483mm tall with a depth of 461mm. Tempered glass panels are on the front and side, and are pretty substantial at 4mm thick giving some extra confidence when handling. There is an option to buy a mesh front for extra air flow but the glass one does have some decent sized mesh style slots running vertically. Once inside, if storage requirements are your thing, you are in luck. The Gamemax F15 G has room to install four mechanical drives and five more for your SSDs or 2.5 inch laptop style hard drives. There are seven full size expansion slots to take a graphics card 365mm in length and a processor cooler 165mm high.
Grab yourself a GPU riser cable and you can mount it vertically right out of the box. Gamemax has given you 29mm for the cable management from all those fans and the standard ATX-sized power supply. And of course, you will need every single scrap of space if you end up with nine storage drives. Also inside is an easy-to-use fan hub, already wired and you get that aforementioned remote for the fans’ speeds, modes, and colours. It is also fitted with a three-pin AURA connector and VDG connector.
You need to power it using a SATA connection, and where the hub is placed from the factory you will need a flat connection – not one where the cables come out at right angles – you can buy adaptors, or some power supplies will come with in-line wiring, or just simply move the hub. It is held in place by a piece of Velcro, so it’s easy to do. Oh, and the hub will take up to six fans. and is compatible with Asus, MSI, and Gigabyte RGB Fusion.
The reset button is wired into the hub so you can change the lighting mode by cycling through them all with the push of a button. On the front, there are the usual suspects of the power button, two USB2 and one USB3 slots along with HD audio and LED indicator. So, back to those fans and cooling in general. At the front, it comes with two 200mm ARGB fans but you could swap them for two 140s or three 120s and at the rear, there is one 120mm ARGB fan. There is room for two LED strips as well if that’s your thing. But of course, there is space up top for a wide range of radiators – at the front, there is room for up to a 360mm, on the top a 240, a 120 at the rear, and two 120mm fans on the bottom. Should be enough for anyone.
The F15 G is a sinch to build in – the motherboard’s rear plate clipped in place easily – something that can leave you pulling out hair with some other cases, so not such a minor concern. The motherboard stand-offs screwed in easily. Even the usually fiddly front control connections like the power switch and hard drive LEDs are easily reached. I literally had nothing to complain about when building a modest PC for the sake of this video – it all went together so well defying the relatively cheap cost these days of the case. Yes, there are smarter-looking cases, but a whole raft of worse ones, and those posh ones will cost you a kidney. Gamemax has come a long way in its relatively short history since its key players met by chance at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and we are eagerly looking forward to what they can achieve in the coming years.
