MSI is back with another case design, and we had the opportunity to build in it and test it out as we’re producing a video for them with updated info on how to enable secure boot and TPM for an upgrade to Windows 11. We actually did a video for this channel on the same thing, where I said it was easy … boy was I wrong. We’ll throw the link up here to the new video on MSI gaming after they upload it, where I added a ton of info and better refined the steps to help you get through the pain.
So today we’ll be looking at the MSI Velox 100P Airflow mid tower case, note that this Airflow model actually ships with one ARGB fan and three black front fans, just be aware. The non-airflow MSI Velox 100R has these ARGB front fans, so either they swapped the case front or MSI swapped them out for a different look in the other video. Currently available here in Taiwan, with shipping and supply chains still recovering, it may not be available for you yet. If you need to keep cool in the meantime, Noctua fans can help you with that.
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Stylish MSI Velox 100P Airflow seems promising vs Velox 100R
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TLDR on the Velox 100P Airflow
A quick summary: The MSI Velox 100P Airflow is a good looking E-ATX case with front and top 360 mil rad spots, full filtered air intake including side vents, and pretty decent airflow, though the top filter is more of a cover. Although this particular build has 4 ARGB fans, again the actual Airflow version only apparently comes with 1 ARGB fan at the back, and three black fans up front, so please be aware.
It was easy to build in, we liked the magnetic front and top filters, and the USB-C Gen2, and dual USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports up top, which are a great inclusion. With a half height hard drive cage, cable management is noticeably easier, although an extra few millimeters behind the motherboard would make fitting all the ARGB wiring in a tiny bit easier, which connects to the included 1-to-6 ARGB splitter board.
If you like easy access to your components, the tempered side glass does that, but it’s also the only real point we have with the case, as the door doesn’t have a latch, a thumbscrew or magnets to keep it closed more securely. The door can swing open when you move this case- so a little caution is needed. Apart from that, with the PSU and dual front ARGB accents and angular design, it’s a solid case delivering lots of airflow to keep thermals down.
The Velox 100P Airflow is long with ARGB accents
Case manufacturers are listening to the market better, and integrating design aesthetics around good airflow, and the MSI Velox 100P Airflow is no exception. Going for $4,290NTD, at exchange that’s about 153USD, 136 Euros, or 195-ish Canadian dollars at the time of production, though pricing may change per country. Key features are the more opened front for better intake, side intake, tempered glass side panel, ARGB accents and 4 dust filters.
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With clearance for up to 380 millimeters long graphics cards, there’s room for CPU air coolers and standard power supplies, and the half height hard drive cage makes wiring easier by sacrificing a bay, and you can choose to remove the cage completely. The Velox 100P Airflow measures 47 and a half centimeters long by 23 wide and 49 high, and weighs in at about 7 kilograms or 15.4 pounds, and a screw bag with zip ties is included.
The MSI Velox 100P Airflow mid tower supports ATX, E-ATX, M-ATX, and ITX. A wider E-ATX board will cover the two rubber grommets for easy cable management. The side intake supports up to 240 mil rads, though using this spot will require removal of the front fans. The side intake is filtered with an inside panel magnetic dust filter, with captive screws on the panel.
The front panel is fairly easily removed by pulling it from the bottom, and the rails support the 3 120 mil included black fans, not these ARGB ones, or 2 140 mil fans, so mounting a 280 or 360 millimeter rad here is possible. The front filter has two tabs at the bottom, and a pull tab at the top, the magnets on the back are nice and strong. The front ARGB panel accents connect with a pin on pad system for easy front panel removal.
The top filter/cover is actually metal, not plastic, and has strong magnets making it slightly tricky to remove. While the top pattern visually looks nice, the metal actually covers roughly 60% of the top, which of course will reduce hot air escaping or being pushed out through a radiator. We would have like to have seen a simple mesh up here instead. Speaking of rads, the top handles 240, 280 and 360 millimeter sizes, with 5.5 centimeters clearance to the top of the motherboard.
The rear panel has the included ARGB 120 mil fan along with 2.5 centimeters of vertical travel, with 7 slot covers. Although not in our box, it should come with a vertical GPU bracket which replaces the whole slot area, sitting the GPU back from the glass for better ventilation. You’d still need to pick up a riser cable separately if you want to use this option.
Top I/O and Velox 100P Airflow internals
Side glass is 3 mils thick measuring 40.5 cm wide by 46.6 high, sitting flush when closed, it is resting on pretty solid hinges at the back, and it stays on the hinges pretty well. With the small handle it’s still easy to open, though we didn’t see any magnets to hold it closed, and moving it with the glass on sometimes resulted in the door opening. We’d like to have seen a latch or thumbscrew here, and you’ll need a little caution when moving the case.
The top I/O panel is laid our length-wise, with power, reset, HD audio, dual USB 3.2 Gen1 ports and a USB-C Gen2, and LED control button. Up top and out of the way, cable management for this is pretty easy.
The feet on the bottom have rubber pads, and the PSU intake has a filter which kinda locks in place, you’ll need to push down a bit at the back and then it will slide out, more secure than most that practically fall out, though you might need a little practice.
Inside the PSU area we can see the half height single hard drive cage, and the reduced height made putting in the PSU easier than normal. The included 1-to-6 ARGB splitter board is beside the two SSD mounts, and the rear tray cutout is 19.3 centimeters wide by 14 high. Side panel clearance is 21 millimeters for wiring, and the CPU power cutout top left has a standard grommet size and was fine to work with.
The riveted PSU cover has a 12 by 5 centimeter high window to show off your PSU, and on the top there’s three 120 mil fan spots if you feel the need. A reminder that radiators shouldn’t be bottom mounted as the trapped air would pool around the CPU pump reducing efficiency, so definitely choose the front or top locations instead.
A little testing on the Velox 100P Airflow, our build
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On the MSI Velox 100P Airflow, intake is pretty good with just a bit of reduction with the mostly open front panel, and we didn’t see any problems with noise or temperatures, though the 60% covered top filter will hinder the exhaust from top mounted radiators a bit, so it may need to be removed if you’re doing heavy CPU usage tasks like rendering.
This build actually used a mix of new and old, with a z390 Gaming Pro Carbon AC and i7-9700 Intel CPU, cooled by an MSI CoreLiquid K360. An NVIDIA RTX 3060 Gaming X graphics card at just 26 centimeters long fit in no problem, and our new RTX 3070 Suprim at 33.5 centimeters will still fit with room to spare, even with the front fans still in. With a Western Digital Black 500 gigabyte NVMe SSD and 32 gigs of HyperX Fury DDR4 RGB at 26-66 megahertz, everything is powered by an MSI A850GF power supply doing 850 watts.
Building in this case was really easy, and if you’ll be using a rad installed at the front then top motherboard wiring will be a snap, though with a top mounted radiator, try to hook up the CPU ATX power first or you may have to remove a fan for better access, though the 5.5 centimeters clearance is fairly standard and enough to work with. Installing the CoreLiquid K360 up top went smoothly, though the front tubing is touching the topmost fan shroud edge with the rad as far towards the rear as possible. So if you have a slightly oversized 360 mil rad, you may have to consider if the tubing will work, just be aware.
Open front, better intake on the Velox 100P Airflow
We covered MSI’s Sekira case awhile back now, and we have much more experience now after doing different case builds. We built a NAS in a Fractal Define R5, a video editing rig in the Cooler Master H500, and in the Cooler Master TD500 Mesh white, where the mesh on the front really allows great airflow and lower temps. While solid or acrylic fronts look nice, the side-intake design does bottleneck cool air coming in, which means you’ll have to run your fans harder.
However the MSI Velox 100P Airflow has a fairly open front along with side slats, so air intake here is pretty decent, and even with a 3 front plus 1 rear fan configuration, this case shouldn’t get hot. The air filters are not too tough to clean, the front panel needs to be pulled off to clean the front filter, but that’s a good trade for this kind of design. The right side panel might take a bit more effort with fitting wiring in there, but as there generally won’t be fans there, you shouldn’t need to clean it often.
At around 150 USD or so, how about the features for the price? Easy to build in, decent angular outside aesthetics with three ARGB accents… there’s definitely value here, especially with the USB-C Gen 2 and dual 3.2 Gen1 with ARGB controller and separate button, which we’ve wished other cases would include. There were no issues with build quality that we found, though the a-little-too-easy to open tempered glass panel requires a little caution.
And with no noticeable problems with noise or temps, the space inside is big enough for most GPUs even with a push/pull up front, which is good news if you are saving up for an upgrade. We’re impressed with the case overall, it’s a solid choice. There’s another version of this case, the MSI Velox 100R, with a tempered glass front panel and front fans upgraded to ARGB from the standard black on this one. I’d be a little concerned about air intake with a full glass front, though fan speeds can be adjusted higher in BIOS to compensate a bit.
Why not give us all the ARGB?
Although I do understand case tooling costs, USB-C wiring and some custom wiring do increase case costs, personally I would want this airflow version to ship with ARGB front fans… it’s part of the appeal, really. Especially when you’ve already designed-in triple ARGB accents around the case. It is nice that they ship 4 fans in the case though, and it does give you decent cooling straight out of the box.
If you’re looking for an ARGB case, there are some other options to consider, like the Cooler Master TD500 Mesh we reviewed, link here for that article, and it comes with 3 front ARGB fans behind a full mesh front, but sadly no back fan is included, no USB Type-C, top mounted 360 mil rads are a little too snug, and the angular glass side is unique but may take getting used to for some.
And we reviewed the Cooler Master H500 no-suffix as well, check our playlist we’ll put up, that’s a great looking case with a mesh option, super easy build, the new version has ARGB front 200 millimeter fans. But there’s no top 360 rad mount as the max is 240, and no USB-C up front either, though it comes with 4 USB ports. We’d actually like to check out one of the new Corsair Airflow models, those look pretty good, let us know if you’d like to see that on the channel.
So we’d say the MSI Velox 100P Airflow has a good balance of features and excellent build quality without too much of a sticker shock, especially considering recent global events. And if you decide to pick one of these up, shopping through our affiliate links below will help us here with no extra cost to you. And follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at techspinreview, and there’s companion posts to our reviews on techspinreview.com.
We have more cases, hardware and tech reviews here and on YouTube so be sure to check those out too. Thanks to MSI for loaning us this case to review, we’re happy to see them responding to gamers and working professionals’ needs for better airflow, and hope to see this trend continue with their future cases.
And a big thanks to Noctua for being our sponsor this episode, we’re using their high static pressure fans to cool the hard drives in our Fractal Define R5 NAS build, video up here, and they’re perfect for cooling your rig, and you can check them out at the links at the top.
What case are you looking for, or did you find a sweet deal you wanna share? Join the discussion in the comments. And we’re interested to hear what you want to see reviewed, let us know and we’ll try ‘n’ get to it. Please take a second to hit Like, subscribe, and let us know how we can improve. We read and reply to a lot of comments so if you have a question or if we missed something, please tell us down below. We really appreciate you watching this far, thanks for your time, and we’ll see you on the next.
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