The G.Skill Z5i is a really interesting and well-thought-out chassis. It is quite the bold move to offer something like bent glass, which very few brands go for in their products as such an attribute is purely design driven and simply adds to the cost of the final product without providing any functional benefit. That said, while it is not a steal, the price point of the Z5i isn't that bad overall considering it ships with a PCIe 3.0 riser cable and utilizes that glass element.

On the interior, the case manages to impress with a functional, well-thought-out layout that does not require you to compromise on parts or the overall assembly process. With the ability to hold a 280 mm radiator in the rear, an SFX-L PSU, and GPUs of up to 330 mm in size, putting the system together did not feel crammed at any point in time. As such, the G.Skill Z5i is a great chassis from an engineering perspective. That having been said, there a few small things to take issue with, from the difficulty of removing the sticker on the glass panel during unboxing to the lack of an ARGB controller or the reinforcement of the plastic base and simple metal mesh top cover—there are a few possibilities to tweak the case. With that in mind, especially the heavy tint of the glass panels is unfortunate. On top of that, G.Skill had a few opportunities to be a little more creative with noticeable impact—like adding connecting plates so that two 3.5" drives could be installed on top of each other.

Thus, just looking at functionality and the engineering of the G.Skill Z5i, everything seems quite positive, even well done, for a brand's first outing into the ITX case segment. Unfortunately, the dealbreaker, and a lesson many other brands also learned the hard way, is the use of glass for these compact cases, which shifts the focus from being functional to the design aesthetics too much. The result is components that struggle to stay cool, which makes for an unnecessarily loud user experience as the hardware is pushed harder than it should be. If G.Skill could take the well-designed and crafted core of the Z5i and replace the two glass sides with the same unique metal mesh as on top of the case, making it even cheaper in the process by eliminating the expensive, 4-mm-thick, bent glass element, such a case could be quite the interesting variant instead.