Over the years, I've come to appreciate the art of building small form factor (SFF) PCs; SFF has the potential to be a fun and rewarding challenge; keep an eye out for G.Skill's new Z5i mini-ITX case, which is a great way to build a small form factor PC. I plan to do the same.

It is expected to be available in early July. In the meantime, G.Skill shared a handful of rendered images and some interesting information about their latest compact case, which offers a "sleek pentagonal prism" design and several unique features. Chief among them is a curved tempered glass side panel.

It is 4 mm thick and surrounds a frame precision molded from a single piece of aluminum. The hinge design allows it to swing like a wing to access the dual chambers.

According to G.Skill, despite its small size, the Z5i can accommodate powerful hardware, including a 330 mm (12.99") long triple-slot graphics card.

This is enough space to accommodate the best graphics cards, such as Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition (3 slots, 313 mm long) or AMD's Radeon RX 6900 XT (2.5 slots, effectively 3 slots, 267 mm long). This is plenty of space. Many custom-cooled GPUs should also fit, although you should check the dimensions to be sure.

A fine all-in-one CPU liquid cooler can also be crammed into this. Specifically, according to G.Skill, the Z5i has room for a 280mm radiator or a 140mm case fan. Either way, there is a magnetic mesh dust filter on top that should prevent dust from entering the interior. Nevertheless, the lack of a front intake fan and ventilation openings on the front of the chassis raises questions about the overall cooling capacity.

For storage, there are two 2.5" drive mounts and a convertible 2.5"/3.5" drive mount. Most motherboards have at least one M.2 slot, which means that a typical build can install at least four storage drives in a compact Z5i-based build. Not bad.

The case sits on a base with addressable RGB lighting. The illuminated "G.Skill" branding is not particularly distracting, but the underglow looks clean, at least from the rendered images. As for connectivity, the case has a USB 3.0 Type-A port and a USB 3.1 Type-C port on the front panel.

Intriguing. Although not mentioned in the press release, G.Skill reports that Amazon plans to carry the Z5i early next month, with the price set at about $199.