darkFlash V22 White Mid Tower; Rotated For Your Pleasure
Tempered Glass, Steel, And Vertical Expansion Cards
Cases rotated 90° were somewhat popular for a while, having your GPU exhaust through the top of your case helps with thermals but you better not drop anything on your case unless you want to risk serious consequences. If you have fond memories of rotated cases, there is a new rotated case called the darkFlash V22 White. It is a mid tower capable of housing ATX and smaller motherboards and it is up for review at Modders-Inc.
The rotation allows you to install up to a 240mm rad or two 120mm fans in the back of the case, with a choice of three 120mm or two 140mm fans at the front, the PSU exhausts out of the bottom as is usual now. The top of the case has a plastic dust filter to protect your back panel, which could present a problem if you have a lot of peripherals to plug in, there are two USB 3.0 ports near the audio and power buttons which may be enough for most users.
Inside you will find well designed cable management features, drive cages designed with right angled SATA connectors in mind seeing how common they have become. You may want to check the sizing of any radiators you intend to use as the space available to mount them is relatively slim and deep radiators may not fit or could interfere with other installed components.
Drop by for a close look at the darkFlash V22, available for about $100 in white like this review as well as black, green and pink if you want a really unique enclosure.
Cases with rotated motherboards are still a bit of a rarity, despite not really being a new design anymore. Because of that, we were intrigued when darkFlash reached out to us about their V22 ATX mid tower case, their take on the rotated motherboard layout. darkFlash has been developing a new design language for their cases, moving away from the …
Rotated for our pleasure? I guess the kinky BDSM-style of pleasure…
Excuse my Esperanto, but the case looks stupid. The fan arrangement clearly is meant for front/back air movement. Yet, installing a card the size of a normal GPU more or less effectively will block most of the airflow. Friggin’ brilliant, if you ask me. How fitting that the linked review forgoes any performance/thermal testing…
Cause is actually great for thermals.
GPU sits right in front of the 3 fans, and AIO’s don’t care if they are drawing from in the case, or out of it. Tests have shown it’s about a 2-3 degree difference, in the best of circumstances. This allows the GPU, which is the component of your case that cares the most about the thermals of its air that it can draw from, to boost as much as it can.
And this has been supported in every test I’ve seen done on the case.
But hey, at least that guy got to make a snarky internet comment and sound like he knew a thing or two about his hobby.
They really hobbled this case by missing off the top exhaust fan mounting.
As others have pointed out, GPU temps will be great but this design poorly supports CPU tower coolers which will want to intake from below (possible with a 120mm intake at the lower rear) but exhaust towards the top which cannot be supported here.