Give this budget PC case a commendation for Valor
Years back, when a small website called out for product-review editors. I leapt at the opportunity: I’d just wrapped up a four-year stint as a systems supplier. That experience provided the credentials I’d need for the transition from industry supplier to industry observer. For one thing, I’d been the first source for an exposé on capacitor plague (“Got Juice”) at EDN.
ADATA's XPG Valor Air ATX PC case does a fine job of packing full-size components into a midsize box at a small, small price.
While the XPG Valor Air's tempered-glass side panel might scream “look at me,” an ultra-low price is the last thing casual observers would glean from a glance at ADATA’s latest PC chassis. Indeed, the low, low $59.99 price of this ATX gaming case is almost a hidden feature. It's only obvious in the handling. Opposite its 3mm-thick glass side, an ordinary steel panel hides cables behind the motherboard tray. Steel is heavy, and a case that weighs only 10.9 pounds after adding a glass sheet, four fans, and a screw pack has scant substance that can reinforce the body. But for the money, this chassis is hard to beat as a budget-friendly pick for packing in big PC parts and looking good doing it. With its bang-up budget credentials, consider this PC case an uncommon Valor and an Editors' Choice winner among low-end tower chassis.
The build may be light, but that’s not to say the Valor Air is wanting for features. We found a dual fan mount in the upper surface, with slots for either 120mm or 140mm fans under a magnetically attached filter sheet. (Fan mounting is even more flexible on the front panel, more about which in a moment.) Those who would like to install a radiator on the top panel, though, will find that motherboard clearance limits these to models based on 120mm fans (including so-called 240mm versions).
Also up here are the ports. Actually located on the right edge of the top panel, the “front panel” ports section includes two USB 3 ports, a headphone/microphone combo jack, a reset button with a drive-indicator LED in the center, and a power button with its own indicator LED in the middle. Those of us frugal enough to be using an older two-plug headset will need to find a combo-jack splitter cable to use it with this case's front panel.
On the underside, we find a power supply dust filter that’s secured with tabs, dual sets of mounting tabs for the included hard drive rack, plastic feet that are capped with foam washers, and a thumbscrew for securing the bottom of the front panel.
Rather than using snaps, the Valor Air’s front panel instead hangs from a bracket at the top and is secured by a screw at the bottom. A dust filter behind it is secured with six tiny pressed-in magnets, and behind that is a front-panel mount that holds three factory-installed 120mm fans or up to two 140mm fans in three overlapping positions. The mounting slots appear to offer enough vertical adjustment to mix one 140mm fan with two 120mm fans, as well.
There’s another 120mm fan out back, and its slots allow for enough vertical adjustment for single-fan radiator clearance. A card bracket that sticks out five-eighths of an inch from the back extends our case measurement by as much, and the slot covers that it holds are replaceable. That is an unusually generous feature for a case priced this low.
An inward step at the front of the motherboard tray prevents boards deeper than 11.15 inches from fitting, but 11.15 inches is greater than the 10.6-inch depth that forces many manufacturers to label their high-end motherboards as Extended ATX or EATX. That is to say: The XPG Valor Air is not "officially" an EATX case, but most high-end consumer boards that carry this label will still fit.
The Valor Air has two 2.5-inch drive trays mounted to the back of the motherboard tray, plus a giant gaping cavity in front of the power supply that’s supposed to hold an included dual-drive cage.
Looking at the picture above, you’re probably wondering why the drive cage wasn’t mounted by the factory (or at least, that’s what we were wondering). It turns out that of the two available mounting positions, the rearward mounts limit power supply depth to 6.55 inches (measured), and moving it forward (by a little more than an inch) eliminates any space for a front-panel 360mm radiator. So if you decide to use the cage, pick your poison.
Here’s what that missing drive cage looks like: It has a space within to hold a 3.5-inch drive, and two sets of holes on top to hold either a second 3.5-inch drive or a 2.5-inch drive. A user guide, a pack of screws and standoffs, and five cable ties are also provided.
Cables include a standard button and LED group on broken-out connections, HD Audio for the front-panel headset jack, and a USB 3 Gen 1 connector labeled USB 3.0. You may have noticed that the ports on the outside are labeled USB 3.2, and that’s because the terms USB 3.2 Gen 1 and USB 3.0 are interchangeable in this context. (In terms of consumer understanding, though? Yikes!)
So, first a look at our test configuration, and the parts we installed to trial-run the Valor Air…
The installation process was straightforward: Since the case had only six of the ATX-standard nine motherboard standoffs installed, the other three were added from the included screw pack to corresponding holes in the motherboard tray. The motherboard was then screwed to the tray, and the case fans connected to one of its fan headers. The CPU cooler’s 240mm radiator was then screwed to top-panel mounting slots while passing the cooler’s fan and pump cables through a cable opening at the top of the motherboard tray. Case cables were plugged into the HD Audio header, the USB 3 Gen 1 front-panel header, and the power/reset/activity LED group along our test motherboard’s bottom edge. No issues there.
Removing a screw on the cover panel above the PCI Express expansion slots allowed access to the slot covers. Removing the second and third slot cover made room for where the graphics card would go (see photo for card position). The graphics card was added from the left-side opening and the power supply from the right-side opening. Power cables were connected to the upper rear corner of the motherboard (ATX12V and EPS12V), the upper front edge of the motherboard (EPS main 24-pin cable), the graphics card (six-pin and eight-pin supplemental PCIe), and the CPU cooler’s power-connector lead, which had been left hanging behind the motherboard tray.
The completed build is very compact by mid-tower standards, with only the compact-component SilverStone Alta G1M offering less mid-tower depth among cases recently reviewed. That should make the XPG Valor Air a very attractive solution to builders who want to use full-size components in smaller work spaces.
Competing cases in our faceoff here include the Lian Li O11 Dynamic Evo, the Fractal Design Pop Air RGB, the Corsair iCue 5000T RGB, the NZXT H7 Flow, and the Cooler Master HAF 500.
Third place isn’t a bad space to occupy if you are a very inexpensive PC case up against five costlier rivals, and that’s exactly where we see the XPG Valor Air’s CPU temperatures...
For our next measurement: Surprise! The Valor Air takes the lead in voltage-regulator temperatures...
...but we’ll try not to get too excited, because much of that result is related to how closely the case design shoves our top-mounted radiator fans toward our motherboard’s heat sink.
Regarding graphics-card cooling, the XPG Valor Air straddles fourth and fifth place, running neck-and-neck with the Lian Li O11 Dynamic Evo case...
Finally, acoustics. If we view the XPG Valor Air’s results through the lens of it being the cheapest case in the test, it’s easy for us to accept that the third-best performer also has the third-worst or second-worst noise level (depending on where measured from)...
The Valor Air's low cost may set things right in a relative sense, but the nicest thing we can say about noise is that these results are too close together for most people to really notice these differences.
Following from that observation on the acoustics, the XPG Valor Air’s cooling and noise performance falls toward the middle of a fairly tight group, leaving its price as the thing that sets it apart the most. The XPG case is two-thirds the price of the second-cheapest case in the charts, and a mere sixth the price of the costliest.
The worst thing we found was that the front-panel dust cover’s pressed-in magnets sometimes pull out when removing the filter, due to the press-fit not being tight enough. Indeed, if you'll handle this case much, the shortfalls and compromises in its materials bill of lading will come clear. But if it'll be parked in a desk niche or on a shallow tabletop and left alone, you will snag a bargain: We can see far, far worse ways to spend $60 on an ATX case.
ADATA's XPG Valor Air ATX PC case does a fine job of packing full-size components into a midsize box at a small, small price.
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Years back, when a small website called out for product-review editors. I leapt at the opportunity: I’d just wrapped up a four-year stint as a systems supplier. That experience provided the credentials I’d need for the transition from industry supplier to industry observer. For one thing, I’d been the first source for an exposé on capacitor plague (“Got Juice”) at EDN.
By that time, I’d already self-published some guidelines on hardcore PC stuff: pin-modifying processors to defeat compatibility checks and overclock non-overclockable systems. I saw a chance to get paid for my knowledge, and have since written more than a thousand pieces (many of them for the seminal tech site Tom's Hardware) before finding my latest opportunity: with PCMag.
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