Louqe Ghost S1 Review

fredih · December 14, 2018

Hey all,

This is going to be a review of the case, not my build in it, maybe I'll make a separate topic for that.

I backed this case on Kickstarter after asking them (Louqe) if they could extend the campaign a little. I wanted to give them my money just one day after their official campaign had ended. They came through, and made a late backer option available. Their email correspondence was also always nice and polite, and as much as I know that backing Kickstarter projects is a bad idea, these guys really managed to convince me with the Videos Jay and especially Dave2D made. That Supreme look was what got me to back it in the end, although I'm generally not a fan of overpriced Chinese things.

So I waited... and waited, and the production got delayed, and delayed again, then there was a problem with the paintjobs, and I had to switch to a silver case instead of white.

After waiting for almost a year, (I first asked them about backing the project in January, the White paintjob issue was in May), I finally got my case in the mail.

I won't go into the packaging much, but the case was double-boxed, one unmarked Cardboard shipping box, and a Louqe branded box (in the first picture below) inside that. The TopHat was disassembled, in a separate plastic bag on top.

Everything was covered by a sheet of Styrofoam - the bad kind, that sounds like nails on a chalkboard when scraping against the box, and the stuff that loses little white particles.

Right from the start, I thought this was going to be my favourite case to this day. The simplicity, engineering and the looks of this case are simply unmatched in my opinion.

What do I mean by engineering? They thought of so many little things. For example, there are four holes in the grill (cna be seen in the second picture below), for screwing the TopHat onto the case with the grill in place, or potentially the Grill itself when used without the TopHat. Also, the side panels screw shut from the bottom, with two Torx screws for each side. At first glance, I rolled my eyes, when I realized they were Torx screws, but in hindsight, it was really clever to use that, since all the screws, and the wrench fit all the time. It all works together almost perfectly.

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I started building in it, and the process was a blast. Of course, I also didn't read the manual. Everything fit in there nicely, and I had almost no issues with the little space available.

A note about that - I didn't use custom cables, or cable manage much, since nothing will be visible, due to the nature of the case.

The only thing that really annoyed me was, that my GTX 980 Ti Golden Edition didn't quite fit with the TopHat, so I had to make it fit. I had to separate the wires of my power supply, (which are sort of folded together like a ribbon cable) and even then, the hoses from my AiO CPU cooler always pushed the bracket up when not screwed down.

The TopHat is also badly engineered in my opinion, since the way that it screws together means, that the top grille has trouble fitting into it flush now. I tried not to use brute force to get it in, but since that didn't work... Yeah, I made that fit too. I'll post more pictures soon, of the insides, but that's it for now.

Upsides:

- Looks absolutely stunning.

- Compact, even travel friendly maybe?

- Good interior layout, well designed

- All aluminium outside (the main inside body is pressed sheet steel I believe)

- Relatively light (again, travel friendly?)

Downsides:

- Bad design on the TopHat - tightens too much from sides to side (when looking at the case from the front) for the top grill to pop in.

- Using springs as threading for the TopHat screws - Whose idea was this??? It's terrible.

- Screws for the TopHat were too short, could barely reach when trying to install the TopHat. Longer screws (M3x8mm) would have been nice

More pictures and Specs:

Pics:

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Specs/Hardware used:

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Mainboard: Asus ROG STRIX Z370-I Gaming

CPU: Intel i7 8086K

GPU: MSI Gtx 980 Ti Golden Edition (had this left over from another build)

RAM: 2x 16GB (32GB) G.Skill Trident Z RGB DDR4-2400

Storage: 250GB Samsung 960 Evo M.2 2280 NVMe (and a 4TB WD external HDD I already had)

Power Supply (PSU): Corsair SF600 (SFX, 80+ Gold Modular)

CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X52

Fans: 2x EK Vardar Evo

Other:

ROG Adressable LED Strip

Cooler Master RGB LED Controller (for the Vardar Fans, since the RGB Header on the MoBo is adressable only, the fans are not unfortunately.)

A few words about my configuration:

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I'm aware that the 8086K is completely unnecessary, and that I could have gotten an i7 8700k, but I wanted the extra performance boost out of the box, think about that what you want. Yes, maybe I'm a fanboy. Also, I only realized that the fans were not addressable, after walking out my local Microcenter, and I was pretty disappointed with myself to say the least. Another $35 for the controller fixed this though. Now, all my RGB Lighting is in three Software’s, CAM for the x52 LEDs, Aura for the Mobo, RAM and the strip, and Cooler Master's own software for the fans. I'd love it, if the manufacturers would simply suck it up, and make their products all compatible between the diffeent programs. It would save me (and most likely many other people) having to install three different programs, plus I have come to hate CAM. It's unstable, annoying (asks for a login every time I boot up the computer, and not as easy to navigate as it could (or should) be, UI is cluttered), and while Cooler Master's software and Aura are better, they are also far from what I’d want them to look like.

There are things that I could have done better for sure, and with some research, these things wouldn't have been such a big problem I'm sure, but that was then, this is now.

Thanks for reading. Tell me what you think about the case and what not below if you want. If you have any suggestions for the build, please let me know!

fredih · October 5, 2020

Time for a bit of an Update, and anyone seeing this because they want to buy a case, or want to get more info on it.

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I've been using the Louqe for two Years now, and I'm still very much happy with it. It's travelled with me on planes about 6 times now, and I'm loving how small it is as much as ever!

If you want to take your PC with you, make sure you put it into your suitcase with some sort of padding. A good thought when putting it in is - would it survive, if I dropped the suticase with the PC in it1 meter (or 3 feet)? If you'Re confident that it'll take that, you should be good. The case is more than sturdy, so it'll handle anything else by itself, the only other problem left would be loose components inside the case.

But coming back to the size... I've encountered a problem. I've been wanting to get a GPU upgrade for some time now, since my old 980ti is getting a bit rusty in 3D modelling and rendering (C4D and AfterEffects). I was looking at the RTX 3090, thinking I was going to buy one, but then I found out that it's 3 slots wide, and qutie tall too. I've written back and forth with Louqe, adn they're apparently working on something to make an RTx 3090 fit. Haven't heard from them in a wile though, so it might take them a few months.

One more Minus-point for the case is storage expansion. I don't have a NAS (yet), and my Google Drive is filling up rapidly. I've already got 3 external drives plugged into my PC at all times for different things, since there's no more room to expand inside the case. If you're tinking of building a SFF pc in there, just be aware of that, and go with large NVMe SSD's on your Mobo fom the get-go, you'll need them if you plan to keep your rig more than a year, and you're a data-hoarder like me.