Conclusion
The Cubitek HPTX-ICE has left us with mixed feelings. It has plenty of charm, but that's accompanied by some deep-seated issues that make its $360 price tough to justify. As noted, this places it in competition with heavy hitters such as Lian Li's PC-V2120, which isn't flawless, but comes much closer than the HPTX-ICE.
The PC-V2120 offers more of, well, pretty much everything. It supports more hard drives, expansion slots and fans while touting superior front panel connectivity. Those specs alone put the HPTX-ICE at a disadvantage, so its poor craftsmanship, flawed door design and quirky dust filter don't help anything.
Overall, we liked the HPTX-ICE's aesthetics and its imperfections don't become obvious until you look closer. In many ways, I appreciate its basic design, but at the same time, it's almost difficult to fathom how utterly feature-less this $360 case is. At the end of the day, it's just a big aluminum box.
The PC-V2120 has a fan speed controller, wheels, noise reducing foam, slide out motherboard tray and arm supports for long VGA cards. Meanwhile the HPTX-ICE has a movable 3.5" hard drive cage that can be installed in the bottom of the enclosure – and of course, the PC-V2120 also has one of these as well.
With the PC-V2120 available for $350, we find the HPTX-ICE a tough sell at $360. Regardless of pricing, it's inexcusable to have doors that don't close correctly and fans that eat their own dust filters, so these problems are especially damning when we're talking about one of the priciest chassis around.
score
Pros: Clean and minimalistic exterior design, light for its dimensions.
Cons: Less features than similarly-priced cases, flawed door design, quirky dust filter, poor cable management, doesn't use a tool-less design.