Geeek’s $69 EXO 1 Is A Lightweight Open‑Air Case With Big GPU Support
If you're wondering who Geeek is, it's not exactly new. Founded in Taiwan in 2012 by a pack of PC enthusiasts, the name isn't a typo; instead, it was picked because it sounds like "PC case" in Chinese. Indeed, that's most of what Geeek makes, but the EXO-1 is the first chassis from the company to combine an open-air design with vertical GPU support. You'll have to be careful if you want to make use of the vertical GPU mounting capability, though, because this is a micro-ATX chassis, so you don't have a ton of clearance between your graphics card and your CPU cooler.
Of course, that's not a concern if you're mounting the GPU in the traditional horizontal orientation, but it doesn't look quite as cool that way. You can also help minimize the issue by using an all-in-one liquid cooler, which the EXO-1 is specifically designed to support; a dedicated mount supports radiators up to 240mm in size.
Potentially the coolest feature of the EXO-1 is the carrying handle at the top. You'll want to be a little ginger with it, because this is acrylic and not machined steel like some of the more expensive open-air and "bench table" chassis designs we've seen. Still, the ability to pick up the whole machine and port it around this way is neat-o-keen for folks like me who still attend LAN parties on the regular. Porting around a big ol' tower got old in the 90s.
The EXO-1 isn't quite available yet; it will apparently start shipping on February 12th. Geeek offers expedited US shipping from its US warehouse, assuming the item is in stock; otherwise, it takes 1-4 weeks for "US Direct Line" shipping. Thanks to its plastic construction, the EXO-1 is quite lightweight, and pretty affordable too, at least as these things go: you can pre-order it for $69.90, with an extra $20 for the PCIe 4.0 x16 riser cable if you want to mount the GPU vertically.
