The Starker Air BTF has a striking feature right on its face—an ARGB-lit and translucent lightning bolt—but the overall build maximizes the normal stuff. Available in a choice of black or white finishes, the case packs three 120mm ARGB fans on the front and one on the rear, as well as dust filters on the top, front, and bottom. A tempered-glass side panel shows off your internal components, and extra pass-through holes in the motherboard tray work with reverse-facing connectors (found on Asus Back to the Future, aka BTF, and MSI Project Zero motherboards). The boxy 19.6-by-9.6-by-18.7-inch shape typifies 20-plus years of modern mid-size tower design.
The back of the case doesn’t immediately stand out, but one feature holds some surprises: The PCI Express (PCIe) slot panel is removable, to allow rotation for use with vertical graphics card mounting hardware and riser cables. Also, that same slot panel is inset from the rest of the back panel to avoid the PCIe-card-insertion (tab interference) issues that too often plague under-$100 cases.
The power supply bracket is also removable, but you don’t necessarily have to remove it; we found that our large standard ATX test power supply would slide in from the side. The 140mm/120mm dual-pattern fan mount on the back, like those of most enthusiast cases, uses screw slots that let you slide fans up or down to increase rear-panel and/or top-panel radiator clearance.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
The Starker Air BTF’s bottom is fully vented and covered in a dust filter sheet that’s attached via magnetic strips around its periphery. In addition to the power supply air inlet at the back, the filter sheet hides a set of mounts for an internal hard drive cage near the front.
A knurled screw, seen here ahead of the filter, affixes the bottom of the plastic face panel to the sheet steel understructure.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
The same style of filter sheet mentioned above covers most of the top panel, as shown below. Also visible here are the up-front ports and buttons. You get USB Type-C and dual Type-A ports, a headset combo jack (headphone/microphone), a mode button for the internal ARGB controller, a reset button (with an inset hard drive activity LED), and a power button (with an inset power-on LED indicator).
The controller button allows users to cycle through 12 modes before going to black (off) mode. Holding the button for a few seconds instructs the controller to switch into passive mode. In this mode, it passes through instructions received through its 3-pin ARGB input cable.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
The top panel has slots for both 120mm and 140mm fans, along with enough space to mount three of the former or two of the latter. A radiator up to 412mm long will fit under the panel if you slide the front fans down a bit. The entire panel sits approximately 57mm above the motherboard’s top edge, allowing for plenty of clearance for tall heatsinks and the like along the motherboard’s top edge.
From this angle, we also see the top of the power supply tunnel, along with its six threaded holes spaced to fit up to three 120mm fans. The tunnel has four additional holes spaced to fit two different kinds of vertical-GPU card brackets, and a removable section near the case front adds 50mm of radiator space behind the existing front fans.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Inside is enough space for a full-spec (13-inch-deep) EATX motherboard, along with the three extra standoff holes needed to support such a big board’s front edge. Those standoff holes are part of a removable drive tray that holds up to two 2.5-inch drives and one 3.5-inch drive on the opposite side. The reverse-facing motherboard connector cutouts are spaced for both ATX and MicroATX reverse motherboards, and the front holes are widened to allow passing through the cables of regular motherboards, as well.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
We see more fun features from the other side. To begin with, consider the space that allows drives to be mounted behind the front edge of a 13-inch-deep motherboard. This is actually found inside a triple 120mm fan mount. As a result, those willing to ditch the tray can add three fans, though the space is so tight that a radiator won’t fit atop those fans. (That’s because the bottom edge of the lowest fan rests slightly below the power supply tunnel.)
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We also see a double drive cage below the side fan mount, and a plastic-framed dust filter covering the front fans…
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
An additional set of screw slots behind the front dust filter’s rigid frame supports up to three 140mm fans, and there’s enough space behind the panel to fit even a whopper 420mm radiator. We just don’t think that most users will be able to wiggle it into place: The space at the front of the power supply tunnel is too narrow to angle such a large radiator in from above, and inserting a radiator that wide between the 120mm-fan mounting tabs at the front appears similarly problematic. Moreover, mounting space overlap at the front top corner favors placing a 360mm-format radiator low on the front panel to leave room for a second 360mm-format unit up top, if twin radiators are your druthers.
Also, notice the connector with the three telescoping pins on the right side of the picture, which passes ARGB power and data to the plastic fascia’s ARGB light bar without using an awkward tethering cable. That’s a nice touch on a modestly priced case.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
The bottom of the device cage gives you the choice of putting a 3.5-inch or a 2.5-inch drive on each of its two trays. For advanced builders, though, the most important feature is a second set of slide brackets. These allow you to move the cage 15mm farther away from the front panel, expanding your space for a front-mounted cooler from 53mm to 68mm thick. (Subtract 26mm for most fans to get 27mm to 42mm of radiator space.) Moving the cage back in this manner reduces the power supply mounting space from about 250mm to about 235mm (still bigger than the case’s stated 220mm of power supply clearance). Those who don’t need the cage can ditch it if they’d like to have all the space.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
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