Chieftec has officially announced The Cube, a new compact microATX case that seems almost specifically designed to blend into a living room gaming setup or serve as a home-theater PC build. The Cube CI-03B-OP, as it is formally known, has a front intake grill and a smooth matte black finish that makes it look like a subwoofer in a speaker setup instead of like a loud, garish PC setup. The whole chassis measures in at just 385 × 265 × 355 mm, and features a healthy helping of front I/O, including 1× USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, 2× USB 3.0 Type-A ports, and a 3.5 mm audio combo jack. The motherboard is curiously positioned horizontally inside the case, even when the case is upright, a design that might result in a starved GPU in some situations, since there is no ventilation on the GPU fan side.

[Editor's note: Our in-depth review of The Cube is now live]

The Cube supports up to a 240 mm radiator and comes with a single 200 mm PWM fan pre-installed. Some other neat features include a "fold-open mechanism," which basically allows you to easily remove the front and top panels of the case quickly for improved access to build in the case. Internally, things are tight, with CPU cooler clearance limited to just 160 mm and video cards similarly limited to 355 mm. Aside from the pre-installed 200 mm front intake fan, The Cube supports up to a single 120 mm rear exhaust fan and dual 120 mm fans, a single 200 mm fan, or a 240 mm radiator on the top panel. It also supports a full size ATX PSU up to 160 mm in length and two 3.5-inch HDDs and two 2.5-inch SSDs, providing reasonable expansion options. It's unclear if The Cube will be available in the US at any point, but it is currently priced at €69.90 in the EU.

More...