The $60 Case Is Back Because Nobody Can Afford Anything Else
Montech's TG3 is a $60 box with four 120mm fans, a perforated shroud, back-connect support and a lighting hub — a specification that would have read as a loss leader a few years ago and now reads as strategy. With memory pricing pushing complete builds out of reach, the enclosure is the one component where the budget tier still gets something for nothing. Three new cases show what that looks like.
What $60 Actually Includes
The TG3 is the headline: $60, four 120mm fans, and a unibody three-fan shroud assembly across the front with a fourth fan at the rear. The shroud is titanium-coloured and perforated on three faces, and the white version gets a matching white shroud instead of a black one. Front I/O is two USB-A, one USB-C and a combined audio jack. Basic, complete, and missing nothing anyone would actually miss.
Inside, the motherboard tray uses the punched-out cheese-grater pattern, the grommets have a curve moulded into them, back-connect boards are supported, and there is a lighting hub. The dust filter is moulded into the top panel rather than being a separate removable part, which is where part of the cost went and which Montech puts at a couple of degrees at most in thermal penalty. That is a plausible trade at this price. It is also a vendor estimate, so treat it as one until someone measures it.
There is a $90 trim with curved glass and a strip of light along the bottom of the chassis, and the $60 model skips the curved glass. The lighting situation between the two trims is muddled — the strip is described both as a feature of the cheap shroud and as part of the expensive version — so check the exact SKU. Montech was aiming at June or July for release.
The Unibody Fan Bet
Three of those four fans share one frame. That is new for Montech and it is the most consequential decision in the case, because it saves money on mounting hardware and connectors and pushes the risk onto the buyer: if one of the three dies, the whole assembly goes back on an RMA. Cheap fans are the first component to fail in a budget build and the last thing anyone wants to tear a machine apart over.
The fans are a revision rather than a clean sheet. Montech says the units in its HS01 and HS02 cases had a slight rattle, and the fix here is a re-swept blade profile toward the outer frame, flattened to calm that noise. Blades are polycarbonate, the frame is PBT with a 30 percent glass-fibre injection for stiffness, and there is a daisy-chain fan in the works, which is the correct direction at this price point.
The rest of the cost discipline lands where it should. There is no bottom intake, so the shallow clearance under the chassis costs nothing. The volume in front of the shroud is large and unused, which Montech suggests is for figurines — a joke that is also an accurate description of what that space is for.
The Two Cases Above It
The King 95 3D at $120 ships with no fans at all, and it is the most interesting chassis of the three. The side fan tray is recessed so it sits nearly flush with the motherboard tray, there is a socketed mount for a third fan up top, and both side vents use angled grills with removable filters. Fan support runs to three 120s on the bottom, two at the rear and two on the side plus that optional third, which is a lot of openings for a case this glassy.
Two details stand out. The top radiator mounts sideways, which almost nothing else does. And the cable space behind the tray is deep, because the front edge is pushed out to clear the top mount in the first place. Against that, the vertical graphics riser and stand shown in the display model are sold separately, so the configuration you see is not the configuration you buy.
The F738 at $100 to $110 is the one I want measured. Its front is an aluminium grill that opens and closes, which turns airflow and noise into something the user controls — and which is also the kind of mechanism that can rattle, jam, or leak air around its hinges a year later. One trim includes two 170mm fans that are 30mm thick, an uncommon size that has historically done well for Lian Li.
The structure is a floating two-chamber design with a steel spine at the back and a removable shipping brace that converts into a phone stand, which is the best reuse of packaging I have seen from a case maker in years. Back-connect is supported, the EPS channels are wide, and the grommets take the stringy HAVN-style approach. The elevated bottom intake sits mid-case and points straight at the graphics card, which should help it, and Montech has committed to adding a magnetic bottom filter. The open question is whether the front-bottom intake short-circuits out through the underside instead of feeding the card — exactly what a smoke test is for. Glass or mesh variants, targeting September or October.
What I Think
Four fans for $60 is not generosity, it is arithmetic. Case makers can see that the money in a build has moved into memory and graphics, and the enclosure is the one line item where a manufacturer can still look heroic. Montech is the only company making that calculation loudly, and it deserves the attention it is about to get.
My reservation is the unibody fan. A $60 case with a single point of failure in its fan assembly is a warranty claim waiting to be shipped, and the people buying at this price are the least able to absorb a return. I would rather have four separate fans and a worse shroud. If the assembly proves reliable over a couple of years, that objection evaporates and this becomes the default budget recommendation.
Buy the TG3 for a budget-first build and stop apologising for the price. Skip the King 95 3D unless the vertical-GPU look is the whole point and you already own fans, because $120 empty is not a budget case, it is a display case. And watch the F738: a front grill you can open is the first genuinely new airflow control idea at this end of the market in a while, and if it tests well it will embarrass cases costing twice as much.