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Sharkoon VG4-W Blue review

The Sharkoon VG4-W is a great budget case with many good features including its looks, the paint job on the inside and outside, and seems solid. New gen case features like a motherboard tray cutout for large CPU coolers, tool-less 90° drive bays cable management holes. A decent upgrade option for those with older cases wanting easy access to HDDs and SSDs, this case has several things going for it... but one big drawback.  Read on to see how my build turned out!  maFKSo8.jpg

I just purchased a VG4-W in blue for my secondary tower build, I was replacing an old cheap case with something more versatile and with better cable management and airflow, as I noticed my old HDD sitting above the PSU was hitting 50*C! So I bought the Sharkoon VG4-W (window variant) in blue.

    I always like to start with the positive, but after carefully unboxing it, I noticed mine had a slight dent in the top of the case, likely from the plastic strapping. I was able to push and work it out, but first impressions... Apart from that, the case looks fantastic, the paint on the outside and inside of every surface is well done in black, and the interior tray is nicely finished in blue with matching colored tool-less drive tray locks, and the overall build is very solid. As this was an upgrade for a living room Media PC, I had an older M-ATX motherboard and it was super easy to drop in. ATX boards may be a tight fit, and will make cable management at the bottom harder. Cable management was easy with lots of tie down points, except note there's no holes at the top of the motherboard tray! This means I had to route the 8 pin Molex connector up to the top right of my motherboard through the gap in the video card PCB between the PCI slot and the HDMI/DVI plate. Not ideal. The motherboard tray does have a large cutout for aftermarket CPU cooling solutions, which I really liked.

    My build had 3 optical drives, 2 HDDs and an SSD. This is where I ran into the biggest issue with the Sharkoon VG4-W Blue: the front intake fan is almost completely useless. It's bolted to the solid sided HDD cage, which has two 5mm x 20mm notches per tray, cut to form the rails to support the drives, and three centered 20mm x 46mm ventilation holes per tray on the front side.

I originally planned to put my HDDs in the top and bottom spots to leave the middle free for airflow. But due to poor design, the middle tray ventilation hole is blocked by the solid backing of the intake fan's spindle. This leaves two tiny holes as the only cooling coming through. For power users with three HDDs, it would be blocked completely. Furthermore, the other side of the HDD cage lacks the ventilation holes, so the air exits around the front or rear of the cage. Some very poor planning, as this will leave hot spots on the left side of your HDDs.

There aren't any spots to bolt fans on the other side of the HDD cage, either. The worst thing is, the front of the HDD cage is a solid piece of stamped metal to save cost. They could have made a front panel and separate cage spaced out by even 5~10mm for much improved airflow but they designed the fan to attach directly to the side of the drive cage. With no additional vents, there's no space for blown air to go anywhere.

In comparison, my Cooler Master case front panel has a good 10mm space before the HDD cage with a more open sided design, which gets lots of airflow through. Since I often do small alterations to suit my builds, with much effort I carefully took apart the Sharkoon VG4-W Blue's front to see if I could drill or use metal snips to carefully widen or make additional air vents, but you'd actually be cutting the actual drive tray... it's extremely difficult. Also, any rough metal edges on the cage would directly scratch the drives. The drive cages are also not removable.

For fan locations, you can change the location of the front LED fan up a whole fan width or down a little to different mounting holes, as there's actually space for two 120mm fans. But in no way would that improve HDD bay airflow, as the cage is sealed at the top. Moving the fan one down to the very bottom, the 6 clear, tiny plastic spacers covering the front filter pegs, holding the front filter and pressing on the fan don't seem to align. I'd probably never see them again, they're very easy to lose. By the way, those wanting to install an extra front fan can forget about that too without bending connections or a possible resolder job, if they want to use the I/O panel. They designed a top fan mount spot but the I/O panel wires all come straight back into that area instead of down or to the side. Your SSDs do have a lot of breathing room though.

I really like the I/O panel layout on the outside, and just love the shaped and almost invisible power button. It's got a solid feel. Cable management went easily and although I could have done a slightly neater job, I did have issues on the back when trying to finally put the side back on. There's not much clearance there at all, but nothing some repositioning couldn't remedy. I will point out that while the side panel front latches work, the top and bottom latches don't seem to at all. It's basically held on by just the front latches and the two back screws.

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    +++ Pros +++
    Solid interior construction, looks very polished.
    3x 5.25" Optical bays, 3x 3.5" HDD bays, 3x 2.5" SSD bays +1 mounting spot case bottom.
    2 LED 120mm fans, 1 front, 1 rear.
    Supports ATX boards, CPU coolers up to 150mm high.
    Air filters covering bottom and front intake.
    Tool-less bay locks: optical x2, HDDx3.
    Motherboard tray cutout for CPU cooling solutions, cable management.
    Goodie bag has matched screws for everything you need to install.

    - - - Cons - - -
    Flimsy case top panel which is easily dented.
    Front intake is 85% blocked by case, and will be completely blocked if installing 3 HDDs.
    Bottom filter comes off too easily, very difficult and requires two hands to re-install.
    Rubber grommets and cutouts missing from motherboard tray top for good cable management.
    Case front very hard to take off. Needle nose pliers (from the rear panel side first) worked for me.
    Case front air filter difficult to clean and replace, with 6 easily lost plastic spacers to reinstall.

 

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    I'm very happy with the case overall. The build is solid and looks great, and I'm excited with the upgrade. I wish the top panel could have been stiffer though, and the strapping guy at the factory a little less aggressive. Sitting under a desk, the LED fans look amazing through the front and side window. I can live without well-latching side panels and a little extra work cable routing in smaller spaces, but the score would have been perfect if the front fan was actually useful.

It's sad because looking inside the case you can see the craftsmanship and planning that went into the layout, and to have just one very essential thing affecting the grade of an otherwise amazing case. I would have gladly paid an extra 5 to 10 dollars to have better front air vents and a easy to clean filter system, I suppose Sharkoon's higher end models have those features.

    This is a good case, and would be excellent with better cooling. If you have more than one HDD though, you should consider another option, or be very skilled with a dremel!
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Update: The front accent LED lights started flickering a week after I bought the case, and while I was very carefully checking the wiring, they finally went out for good and won't come back on. While I was in there, I also decided to use tin-snips to carefully cut out a circular hole in the drive bay, using a big soft towel behind to catch metal and shavings. It took about 90 minutes to open up the area, but would have been much easier if I'd done this before the components were installed. Or, if Sharkoon had done a better design job. Still somewhat happy with the case, though.

 

Reviewer's note: I originally posted this in June as a public service. Since then I misplaced/lost the original photos I had. These images are mine and taken by me, and I give my permission to use them here. (removed watermark from previous site.)
 

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