Functional interior
Many of you know Zalman as a manufacturer of cheaper computer cases. In today’s review, we have chosen the S5 from this company. It got into my hands thanks to Ľubo, who picked it for his own needs and before he uses it, I will carry out a little autopsy of it. This was also the original intention, to make a general overview and compare with the price-equivalent Chieftec Hawk or MSI Forge 100M cases, which we have already tested.
Functional interior
This mid-tower from Zalman can offer more space than one would expect. The most commonly used motherboard sizes such as ATX, mATX and Mini ITX are welcome to the S5. The case can also take long graphics cards such as RTX 30xx with a length of up to 340 mm. Here, however, I would pay attention to the airflow for the graphics card, as there is only one fan in the case to blow cold air. You can compensate for this by placing another two 120 mm fans on top of the tunnel. Alternatively, instead of cooling the graphics card from the bottom, throw in two more 2.5″ drives.
Water cooling can be underlined by means of a side extension for mounting two 120 mm fans and a radiator up to a thickness of 65 mm. With this holder, Zalman also offers to use your creativity on the case to match the colors of the fans with the rest of the rig. Water cooling can also be placed under the ceiling of the case, provided that the memory modules are not larger than 35 mm. Otherwise they would collide with the cooling block. If you are a supporter of standard traditional air cooling and tower coolers, the case lets you mount a heatsink with a size of up to 163 mm.
The big disadvantage of the case is that the engineers thought that a 24-pin cable for powering the motherboard can be connected through the passages without any problems by anyone. No, if you have a cable with capacitors on it, it will be a little trickier, but not impossible. Fortunately, the 0.65 mm thick sheets are flexible and I was able to run the cable through there. With the last few cases, I’ve encounter this more than expected, and this can already be seen in the cable insulation.
Great cable management is a big bonus, which is like a gift from heaven with the case for 45 euros. A large plastic cover, which covers and at the same time holds the amount of cables, is placed on the hinges. Thanks to it, it is possible to close the case with a side panel very easily, without cable resistance. There is less space from the main skeleton to the side panel, exactly 1.5 cm. It is possible to mount 2× 2.5″ SSD/HDD. The space behind the cover, where everything essential happens, is significantly larger – 3.5 cm. So there is no need to worry about any extra knots or arrangements. The lower part, behind the cables, belongs to a drive bay with two drawers for two 3.5″ HDDs. However, these lack some anti-vibration elements.
