Provided by: XION
No compensation was received for review of this product.
Price Point
Price: $89.99
Class: Mainstream Gamer
With a retail price of $89.99 USD, the XION Xon-980-BK Mid Tower is in the Mainstream Gamer category of computer cases.
Reviewer's Opinion
The XION XON-980-BK case performed well and the build quality is good. XION designed it with more than enough space for a mainstream gaming build. The case supports heatsinks up to 165mm in size and I was even able to fit a large Phantek heatsink into the case. The XION case also provides plenty of room for larger video cards, with 340mm of clearance. The honeycomb mesh design looks very nice and is well done, providing plenty of airflow. The stock cooling is configured to provide positive pressure with more air being pushed into the case than removed with the exhaust fans. Looking at the numbers from the OCCT benchmark, the case has good airflow, especially considering that the ambient temperature of the room was high at 26C and some older components were used that generate more heat than newer parts.
The fan controller on the top of the case allows you to turn on/off up to four fans. I found this feature to be fairly useless, since you typically don’t want to turn the fans off completely, you just want to adjust the RPM for the desired noise to cooling ratio. The cable management in the case, while adequate, could have been a bit better considering the price of the case. Using rubber grommets to hide the cables going through the routing holes would have been preferred and there needs to be just a bit more room behind the motherboard tray. I was able to fit all my cables behind the tray but they had to be positioned just right to get the side panel back on.
Installation of components in the XON-980-BK was very easy with plenty of room to work and get your hands in, other than at the top of the case. It would be difficult to get your hands to anything at the top of the motherboard once the heatsink is mounted. If you were to use the top of the case for mounting a water cooling radiator, you would have less of an issue since there would only be a water block and not a heatsink to work around. The removable hard drive trays worked well by simply flexing them a bit to snap the 3.5” drives in place and had the ability to mount 2.5” drives with screws. Mounting 5.25” drives into the system was fairly easy by removing the front bezel and sliding the drive into place. The screw holes were designed to reduce vibration with rubber grommets on them but required the use of special mounting screws.
Overall, the XION XON-980-BK was a nice case to work with and, at $89.99, did a great job of providing tons of features for the mainstream gamer. The case had a nice matte black finish inside and out and there were no sharp edges within the case. The airflow was good in the case and the cooling setup worked well, though the fans were a bit loud. The support for large CPU coolers, large video cards, and water cooling are nice to see in a case at this price point. Considering how common larger components and self-contained water cooling are becoming, this case does a good job of targeting the mainstream gamer.
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