Gelid Solutions Black Diamond ATX Chassis

The Gelid website shows the pretty LED fans all lit up - but you need the right kind of motherboard to get this effect. If you have standard PWM fan headers they won’t light up. Not a huge concern for me as I replaced them with Noctua ones anyway, but be aware.

The glass panels are decently thick smoked glass with thumbscrew fastenings which makes for easy disassembly, and the filters in the front air intake can be removed for a quick wash and dry without undue fuss.

The metal of the casing is thin and quite flimsy - I’ll probably have to add some Dodo mat / Dynamat to the side panel. The vent blanks at the back that have to be removed to fit your GPU can be flexed until the linking sprues break.

The three Gelid ‘Stella’ LED 120mm fans that come fitted to the front air intake have a lot of cable hanging off each one, having both PWM headers and both male & female connectors for full LED control allowing them to be daisy-chained: those who value a tidy casing may find it a challenge to get them stowed satisfyingly.

Be VERY sure you measure for the clearance of your CPU cooler. If you are using liquid cooling then this casing will accommodate most radiators: but if your CPU is aircooled, beware. My very large Thermalright cooler meant that I had to use spare motherboard standoffs to extend the glass side, then fill the gap (thankfully some Stormguard extra thick rubber weather strip did the trick!

It may sound like I have nothing nice to say about this case, which wouldn’t be true. When finished it does look good - the black glass front is elegant, and it has excellent space for extra cooling in configurations that many more expensive cases just don’t. It’s also got a rather neat touch where you can mount two SSDs directly onto the interior bulkhead between the front air intake and the motherboard, putting them into the cooling air stream.

The casing has done exactly what I needed it to and provided an understated, more compact replacement for my massive old Corsair case at a price that didn’t give me a nosebleed. If you want a PC that lights up like a rave in a Christmas tree you could do worse than this case but make absolutely sure your hardware has the facility to support that.