The building experience is as good as it gets, and so are the fans. As long as you don’t touch it, the case also maintains its premium impression. If you treat it like a museum piece, to place and admire, you'll be happy with this bigger-than-ATX bruiser. Pity about all that plastic, though. I have no major complaints about the number of storage mounts or how they work, but snap-in, no-screws drive mounts would be an improvement. I expected this case to be quite the noisemaker due to all of the fans, but I was pleasantly surprised. These are actually the quietest bundled fans I think I’ve ever heard. I couldn’t hear them at all without putting my ear within mere inches of them, with my head partially inside of the open and running PC. (Hopefully, you won't be doing that very much.) Getting a system built into the case couldn’t be simpler. The motherboard mounting tray is large enough to easily fit any ATX, nonstandard ATX, or E-ATX motherboard. After the board is mounted, a wide expanse around the edges makes connecting cables as easy and straightforward as possible. While I have run across a few cases equally as easy to build in, with the Torrent RGB I see little possible room for improvement. The impression that the Torrent RGB is a premium case tragically falls apart, however, as soon as you touch it. Though the tempered glass is real, the front of the case, which is designed to look like metal, is not metal. Instead it’s made out of plastic, and flimsy-feeling stuff at that. The top of the case is also plastic, albeit a firmer kind than the front, and the same texture and stiffness of plastic is used on the bottom of the case for its feet.

One area in which the Torrent RGB could use some improvement is in its storage-drive mounts, as none of these has a tool-free design. In total, you get room to add two 3.5-inch drives and four 2.5-inch drives. None of these mounts overlaps, so you have a total of six true, discrete drive mounts available. Cooling is a specialty and a strength of the Torrent RGB. It ships with a whopping five of Fractal Design’s new Prisma fans. Three of these fans are Prisma AL-14 models; these are 140mm in size and come mounted on the bottom of the case. AL-14 fans are rated to produce 103.85 CFM of airflow with a noise production level of 34.1dB(A). For as long as I can remember, I've had love of all things tech, spurred on, in part, by a love of gaming. I began working on computers owned by immediate family members and relatives when I was around 10 years old. I've always sought to learn as much as possible about anything PC, leading to a well-rounded grasp on all things tech today. In my role at PCMag, I greatly enjoy the opportunity to share what I know. When mounting the PSU on the Torrent RGB, however, the PSU is kept in full sight at all times and is easily accessible. There’s no fumbling around with getting cables in or trying to hold it in place. You still have to hold it, but as you don’t have anything obstructing your view, it’s far easier than normal to guide everything where it needs to go.

Verdict: One Cool RGB Cat

Another major benefit of this design is that you can easily add or remove cables to a modular PSU by just removing the top panel. This is an enormous improvement over most other PSU-mounting locations, which more often than not require you to remove the PSU to add or remove a cable. There’s so much I like about the Torrent RGB that as I worked to build a PC inside of the case, I became increasingly disappointed with these prominent plastic features. I can understand why Fractal Design might have opted for plastic in these locations; it cuts costs and can help to reduce the overall weight. (The case, at around 24 pounds, is already costly and heavy enough without adding on several sheets of metal.) But the plastic simply makes the case feel a bit cheap, especially the flex about the front. At a minimum, Fractal Design should switch to a sturdier plastic for the front panel in a future revision of this case. You can find the full statement from Fractal here , including support links and guides to disconnecting the hub. The original review follows below. For controlling the fans, Fractal Design includes a fan controller at the bottom of the case, lined up along the edge behind the glass. This device has support for a total of nine fans, which is a bit of overkill given the case has room to mount a maximum of just six (or, technically, seven if you swap out the 180mm fans for smaller ones).

However, no RGB controller or hub is present, so you will be relying on the A-RGB ports of your motherboard. This isn’t an issue if you opt for any other version of the Torrent than we’re testing today, but if you want this RGB variant, do make sure you have two A-RGB ports on your mainboard.

Is there such a thing as too much airflow?