Case design is one of the few places where PC hardware manufacturers can still actively innovate with their products. We’ve seen some pretty fascinating cases in the last few years, like the back-connect designs from MSI and Maingear. Chinese vendor GameMax isn’t doing something so drastic with its new Vista COC chassis, but this case still has an ace card hidden behind.
Said card is the “COC”, right in the name of the chassis. COC stands for “Cooling Over Clocking”, and refers to that fan you can see right there in the motherboard tray. That fan sits directly behind the CPU socket and blows cool exterior air directly onto the back of the CPU socket and across the back of the motherboard.
The benefit of having a fan on the back will obviously depend to some degree on the design of the back of the motherboard; some boards have “armor” on the back that could impede airflow. It also depends to some degree on the mounting hardware for the CPU heatsink; machines with through-hole heatsink brackets may not benefit as much as those using the standard mounting hardware.
Overall, despite that we just called it “standard”, this case does look like an exceptional value. A competent ATX chassis with a two-sided glass window and no less than six fans (counting the COC fan) included for $59.90 ain’t bad at all. GameMax says the Vista COC ATX Chassis is shipping to partners worldwide and should hit retail soon.