With two 120mm fans, plenty of storage space, and tempered glass side panels, the Bitfenix Nova performs well above its weight class. The case has a lot to offer for its size, and is designed to support disk drives for the dozen or so people who still have disk drives on board in 2022.

The Bitfenix Nova offers a suboptimal layout for its large storage capacity. The top-to-bottom storage cage takes up most of the front of the case, leaving considerably less space for graphics cards and no room for a liquid cooler or more than two fans. Airflow is also limited when several drives are installed.

Nevertheless, with only an NVMe SSD installed for testing, the CPU and GPU ran at acceptable temperatures. The lack of space in the front is not a major issue in my testing.

There is, however, severe rattling, mostly due to the HDD trays, which wobble so much in the bays that they can easily fall out completely. And that's with no heavy drives in it. I don't have much faith in this case's ability to hold up during moving or transport.

The main component of an impressive PC case is airflow, but you would be surprised at how many case designs do not do this well at all. Ideally, a handful of high-flow intake fans at the front of the case would draw in cool air, place it over the PC's components, and exhaust it. However, inexpensive cases do not always come with the ideal number of fans for this optimal setup, so it is especially important to find one that is smartly designed to work with limited cooling capacity.

To test the thermal characteristics of these six inexpensive cases, we built a PC into each case. We then ran several benchmarks to put routine stress on the CPU and GPU, and the average results are summarized in this graph.

However, there is no room for a radiator, so there is no room for a liquid cooler larger than 120 mm. The case has no ventilation openings at the top and the front cage is bolted in place, making it impossible to install a 240mm radiator. This is not a problem if you are sticking with stock cooling or an inexpensive air cooler, but it is something to keep in mind.

This large storage cage means that organizing PSU cables is a bit of a challenge.

Even with the large tempered glass side panels and the white-colored case provided, this is not the most beautiful case I have tested. The front of the case is plain and old-fashioned, and the white paint used on the case does not match the overall construction of the case.

The Bitfenix Nova is a case with plenty of room for storage expansion, and in that sense no other case I have tested comes close. However, the look is a bit tasteless, and the poor fit of the drive bays and their location makes one wonder how practical this case will be once it is full of valuable kit. Coupled with the lack of air-cooling options, unfortunately, this case does not seem to be the case of choice.

Our group test: cheap PC cases are a great way to cut costs on your next PC build, but many of the brands we're used to seeing in the Top Case Roundup aren't cheap enough for what we want. So we asked our friends at Overclockers UK (opens in new tab) if they could loan us the cheapest case available.