We’ve seen some weird and wonderful ways of keeping our gaming PCs cool over the years, but CyberPowerPC may have come up with one of the strangest – yet also strangely elegant – solutions with its new Kinetic chassis.
Announced during CES 2022 (though not actually at the event itself due to the pandemic), the CyberPowerPC Kinetic comes with 18 individually-controlled articulating vents that open and close depending on the temperature inside the case. If things get too hot, the chassis will sense the temperature and adjust the vents to increase air flow, cooling things down.
CyberPowerPC claims this will allow the case to control temperatures with an incredible degree of accuracy, and users can further customize temperatures via included software. Quick buttons will also allow you to instantly open and close all the vents at once.
The Kinetic Series chassis will support full ATX motherboards, along with up to seven 120mm fans (or five 140mm fans). So, while the vents will hopefully help reduce the need for fans (and therefore keep things more quiet), you will still need some fans. It’ll go on sale towards the end of 2022 with a suggested list price of $249 (around £190, AU$345). That’s pricey for a PC case – but this one certainly is unique.
Analysis: it looks fantastic, but we have our concerns
Keeping our gaming PCs running cool is incredibly important, as the cooler components like processors and graphics cards are, the more you can push them, so a PC case that can keep them frosty without having to resort to noisy fans is always going to get us to sit up and take notice – especially when it looks as unique as the CyberPowerPC Kinetic Series.
As you can see in the video above, when in action, the CyberPowerPC Kinetic is unlike anything we’ve seen before, and it definitely comes with some strong cyberpunk and steampunk vibes.
But we do have our concerns. Any moving part in a device is a potential point of failure, so those 18 vents are adding additional parts that could break. They’ll need to be very well made, otherwise this is a case you won’t want to move much. Also, they look like they could trap inquisitive fingers – we doubt they would close with enough force to hurt anyone, but again it could break the vent.
CyberPowerPC is offering a one-year warranty and lifetime technical support for the chassis, which allays some of our fears, but we do worry this thing could be a bit fragile.
Still, we can’t wait to get our hands on one (while watching where we put our fingers) to see if it’s worthy of our best PC cases guide.
- Check out all of TechRadar's CES 2022 coverage. We're bringing you all the breaking tech news and launches, everything from 8K TVs and foldable displays to new phones, laptops and smart home gadgets.
