Akasa Raptor review

It doesn’t have a particularly stylish exterior, but Akasa’s Raptor case has an impressive interior design. The all-black chassis looks excellent and not something we would expect from a budget case.

With seven 3.5in drive bays, only two of which are external, there’s plenty of room for hard disks and the quick release caddies make it easy to add more. Two of the four external 5.25in drive bays have hinged covers that can cover up your optical drives, but all four have tool-free retaining brackets. The I/O panel is beneath the external drive bays and contains two USB ports, an eSATA port and audio in/out jacks.

Two 120mm fans are provided, which should be enough to cool a basic system. If you need more cooling power there are mounts for a further three. A larger 140mm fan can be installed in the roof of the case and two 120mm fans added to the side panel will cool the processor and expansion cards.

It was easy to tame cables using the three large pre-cut holes in the motherboard tray. A larger gap in the tray itself provides easy access to the processor backing plate if you want to install a large tower-style CPU cooler. Power and SATA cables are kept clear of any expansion cards because the hard disks are mounted sideways rather than in parallel to the rest of the case.

It won’t win any style awards, but a well-thought-out interior and plenty of cooling potential makes the Raptor a great budget case.