Review System

Assembly

Installing the motherboard is done by traditional means, using the pre-applied spacers and screws. There is still quite the gap between the board and PSU bay, which will come in handy for cable routing down the line. Even tall memory will fit inside the Z5i without issue.


If you are opting to add a 3.5" drive, you may simply screw it in place with the connector facing towards the back of the chassis. There is plenty of space here, so G.Skill could have included a pair of connecting plates to stack two drives on top of each other, for example.


To install the PSU, you first have to screw it on to the mounting plate and then put that plate back into the chassis. As you can see, the SFX-L unit fits just fine with the cables nicely tugged away, so the glass panels may easily close once the build is complete.


With a 3.5" hard drive in place, the Zotac GeForce RTX 3060Ti fit perfectly underneath of it with its length of just under 230 mm. This means you can have both large capacity spinning storage and plenty of GPU power for the latest games. Naturally, by removing the hard drive, any modern GPU can fit. With dual-slot cards, there is ample room towards the glass panel, which should give you a little more buffer in terms of potential heat build up.


To install an SSD in any of the three spots, first apply rubber-ring-equipped screws and then slide them into one of the slots of your choice. Even with the installed drives facing the rear of the chassis, there is plenty of space to slide in and install an AIO, for example.


Thanks to ample space, installing an AIO with an in-line pump poses no issue—the whole contraption with the fans assembled easily fits right in.


With everything installed, you can clearly see the notable gap between the AIO and any components, which could make that dream of a push/pull configuration a real possibility with a bit of creative cable managements. Even though the case tapers to a point towards the front, it never feels too crowded to properly use the interior of the Z5i. G.Skill has also placed lots of hooks for cable management around the chassis in useful locations so that cable management is easily done.

Finished Looks

With everything assembled and the system turned on, you will find the small blue LED illuminating the center of the power button.


Looking at the front, you can see the ARGB elements of the components within, but the fairly dark tint of the glass panels ends up filtering most of that out. Most brands have left behind dark tints or at least given customers options between various levels. Light or clear tinting would benefit the Z5i as well. In the end, the whole reason for such a panel is to show off your parts after all. Looking at the rear, there is nothing but the radiator, and the cables extruding from underneath the base of the enclosure.


Looking straight at the two sides, it becomes apparent that the tint really blocks the details of the components within, with the illuminated elements taking all your attention.


The lighting forming the underside glow in the base and the lit up G.Skill logo are both great little touches. While we usually show off solid color toggles at this point, we can skip that step with the motherboard controlling the ARGB elements. A quick peek at the underside of the G.Skill Z5I shows that the height of that base is just tall enough for traditional, straight power cables to be utilized without issue.