Foxconn G-007

There are many things I appreciate in a computer case – understated design, solid construction, sleek black lines and curves, and ease of use. Happily, the Foxconn G-007 delivers on most of these fronts.

Techies may know Foxconn as the world’s largest electronics manufacturer (it makes iPods, iPads and iPhones for Apple amongst thousands of other things), whereas stuff.co.nz surfers may know it as that place with the alarmingly high employee suicide rate; either way it is a prolific peddler of goods and my expectations of its products are high.

The G-007 is from their “Gamer” series of Tower cases, and fits the common ATX standard. First impressions are good – mainly its reassuring heftiness. The style is definitely unique as well, particularly the front lip which sticks up at a 45 degree angle from the case.

A peek through the side window reveals the first minor disappointment – the interior is unpainted. This wouldn’t be a problem if the side panel wasn’t see-through, but when you add a window it’s usually to show off the inside of the case, and unpainted steel is just plain ugly. On the plus side it’s good quality steel, and all the edges have been folded in to prevent slicing your finger open or – worse – scratching your precious hardware.

The inside of the case has another welcome surprise in the form of tool-less drive bays. Just slot your hard drive or optical drive into an open space, click a red slider into place and the drive is secured. Nice.

There’s a 120mm exhaust fan installed on the rear panel – red to match the locking sliders and trim of the case – and another 120mm fan on the top panel which is hidden. On lighting duties is a 30cm red LED strip running along the bottom of the case which serves to illuminate your motherboard and components, with a switch to turn it off if you find it distracting.

My major niggle with this case is the cable management system – or lack of it to be specific. There’s no room to route cables underneath the motherboard tray; you can’t even remove the rear panel to access that side of things. There’s no easy path to run cables behind the drive bays either. The plethora of cabling coming from the front panel inputs (which to be fair are numerous) just adds to the inevitable spaghetti junction of cables inside the case.

My last gripe is that the PSU mount is at the top of the case. This isn’t a huge downer, but it just means that the power supply is sucking warm air from inside the case, instead of the fresh room-temperature air it could be getting from the bottom of the case.

At the end of the day I had no issues installing a full rig into the spacious interior of the G-007. It’s a high quality and stylish case, but depending on how fussy you are with your cable management, it’s hit or miss design-wise.