Assembly

Installing a BTF motherboard inside the Sharkoon AK5G RGB works perfectly fine. There are well-placed openings in the shroud and above the top of the motherboard. The ports on the back of the board are all accessible, but things are a little tight along the edge that is facing the front of the case due to the way one will likely cable manage the IO and fan wires.


Adding the GPU to the mix is also done by traditional means, and thanks to the opening for the power cable, you can easily run that wire straight to the graphics card. The metal GPU support bracket also works well, but you should really take it out of the case when transporting your system, as the magnetic base isn't very strong.


If you want to install an SSD, the simplest way is to slide the drive right into one of the two plastic trays. The whole unit is held in place by tension - on one hand by the one clip at the bottom and then also by two clips pushing down on the face of the drive. This setup means that you need no tools at all, and you can accommodate thicker drives - likely normal spinning rust of this format.


The plastic HDD tray in the cage sports plastic pins, so adding a 3.5" drive also does not require any tools. The tray is pretty bare, using very little plastic due to the design, but the bar in the front helps with the needed rigidity to keep the drive inside the tray once fully inserted. Alternatively, for any 2.5" drive in the tray instead or an additional 3.5" unit on top of the cage, you will have to secure your storage with screws.


We were able to easily fit a potent PSU without having to move the HDD cage position, meaning you can also still go for a 360 mm AIO in the front at the same time. The power supply is secured using the supplied screws though the back of the Sharkoon AK5G RGB.


The best place for a 360 mm AIO is the ceiling and the AK6G RGB has plenty of room for it. So much so that the case was just a little ways away from also being able to support a 420 mm unit it seems. If we had one, we would be tempted to try it. With the 120 mm wide 360 variant, there is plenty of room to still get to the openings above the board for cable management, and you should be able to use any memory of your choice, regardless of its height.


With everything installed you can't see a single cable in the interior, except the GPU power. This is due both to the fact that we are using a BTF board and thanks to the possibility to route the cables from the front fans along the top edge of the interior. Those using ATX boards will be able to keep things to a minimum as well, thanks to the well-placed openings. In the rear, we went a little overboard with the zip ties this time around. You don't need to, but we went in stages, first tackling the cables directly after motherboard install, then subsequently adding more as we added more components like power and AIO wiring. The case has a ton of zip tie hooks, so we were also tempted to keep using more and more. The result is great, considering you have wiring for a total of seven fans, five ARGB components and one RPM pump at the top edge and all other cables like IO and power spread properly as well.

Finished Looks

Turning the Sharkoon AK5G RGB on, you are greeted by a white power LED at the top of the case and soft squares around the otherwise black fans.


The RGBs inside the fans in that shape give the case another design aspect to complement the front - even if the diffusion is not quite perfect. As there are several of those rings, the fans also give the front a bit of much-needed depth. In the rear everything is where you would expect to see it, with the rings of the rear fan clearly visible as well. As the AK5G RGB can be considered a modern, traditional tower, we don't expect much more of the chassis in this area, but external zip hooks seem to be the new hip thing to include to allow for external cable management as well. Thus, Sharkoon could have embedded 2-3 of them along the left edge of the rear.


Thanks to the clear glass panel, you will be able to see all your hardware even with the lack of glow from any hub mounted RGBs. On the opposite side, there is not much to see, but if you look closely, you can see the magnetic dust filter not lining up perfectly, as it is too slim on the sides.

Thanks to the built-in controller, you can toggle trough various single- and multicolored animations. On top of that, the Sharkoon AK5G RGB also allows you to set an above average nine solid hues, as shown below.




Lastly, as we still have that mesh front panel of the AK5M RGB variant, we snapped this one on with some healthy force and took some pictures of it for your viewing pleasure.