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First Look: Unboxing The Cheap & Beautiful Montech Air X ARGB EATX Mid-Tower
Does anyone remember when SysOpt published its own reviews and had a frontpage with actual articles? At that time it went from 1m unique monthlies to 5m. Anyway, I did stuff like this:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070428...le.php/3672776, so when someone offered me a review product without a site, I thought of a message board that used to have a site
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While discussing a related topic, a friend in the PR business let me know about an under-promoted case brand that was pushing high-value deals with little fanfare. A few emails later and the Montech was ready to buy back one of its cases and have it shipped directly from Newegg. The only condition of this sponsorship was that I should drop the project if I encountered any disqualifying issues. LOL, OK then.
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The Air X ARGB arrived in an ordinary cardboard box with minimum shipping damage. Packed back-side-down, a quick look inside revealed that the corners of the Styrofoam liner were only beginning to crumble.
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Packaging the manual outside the case might help any first-time builders figure out how to open the thing, but it just has the normal four thumbscrews on the back edge of these panels, so it shouldn’t be hard for most people to figure out.
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Unlike traditional glass-sided cases, the Air X ARGB’s single glass panel is glued to a steel frame at the front and back. Protective sheets on both the inner and outer surfaces protect it from scratches during shipping, and the tempered glass sticker is attached to the removable film, rather than the glass beneath. Both sides fit within recesses of the top and bottom panels to reduce the likelihood of an accidental drop.
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Even though this is just the unboxing portion of the review, I had to remove the right panel to access the included screw pack, which is located within the case’s single-bay drive enclosure. That enclosure has additional holes for mounting a second drive on top, along with a pair of 2.5” trays in other locations.
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The complete hardware pack includes nine panhead #6-32 UNC screws, eight hex/Phillips head #6-32 UNC screws, 28 M3 screws, three standoffs, a hex standoff socket with #2 Phillips head, a beep-code speaker, and five cable ties. The manual designates the #6 panhead screws for 3.5” drives (there was one extra in the bag), the hex/Phillips #6 screws for power supply mounting, sixteen of the M3 screws for 2.5” drive installation, and nine (of the remaining 12) M3 screws for securing the motherboard. At least they included enough screws!
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Spoiler: The Air X ARGB is a true EATX case with a motherboard tray that supports the full set of 12 standoffs required to secure a 13”-deep full-spec EATX motherboard. Understanding that the 10.7” deep “EATX” boards of most performance PCs require only nine standoffs, the firm installed only six and included only three spares. Still, I would have preferred that a case with the full 12 mounting points include enough standoffs to use all of those.
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With everything unboxed, I’m ready to dive into the additional features of this stylish, value priced case. Please stay tuned!
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Member
Pros:
EATX support
Cons:
No external drive bays, so no CD/DVD or other drive mounting available.
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Originally Posted by jdc2000
Pros:
EATX support
Cons:
No external drive bays, so no CD/DVD or other drive mounting available.
You got it. I'll go ahead and put up Part 2
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