On paper the Gamdias Athena M6 certainly is an interesting proposition. An ATX chassis with four ARGB fans and cool additional lighting on the underside for $85 seems quite appealing. While it may have a pretty traditional external design, those on a tight budget tend to appreciate a feature or function over extravagance anyways.

In the interior you are greeted by a compact but flexible chassis, for a well sized build for the target audience, with the ability to install an AIO in the front and/or ceiling without any dealbreakers, even if you must ensure to wire everything up before installing a radiator in the ceiling.

Unfortunately, there are some elements that may push potential buyers to spend $10 more to avoid and as such forgo the unique under-body lighting in the process. For example, the case comes with two USB 2.0 ports and only a single 3.0 connector, which feels very out of place - more so with USB 4.0 becoming prevalent. All but the most simple, affordable enclosures should really stay clear of 2.0 at this point.

Then there is the ARGB interface of the fans and lighting. Being proprietary, you won't be able to expand it with your own and still use the built-in button to toggle through the illumination choices. Paying for something that limited, which in turn is tied to the one big unique feature in form of the under-body lighting of the Athena M6, is certainly the biggest issue of this chassis. By upgrading you have to either relinquish the case button control to your motherboard via software control or loose that unique selling point, and pay extra by switching controllers and installing universal fans.

In the end, you have a no-frills, but quite functional body as a base of the Athena M6, with four fans out of the box and an adequate build quality, with a nice USP in the form of that under-body glow. In terms of pricing, while adequate for the features and build quality, the fact that you are locked into a proprietary interface for ARGB support on the fans and lighting components is ultimately what keeps the case from being recommendable. And at $85, there are plenty of other options out there that may not have that ARGB layout but offer more refined essential features, and a modern IO, thus keeping the Athena M6 from receiving the budget award as well.