Best Open Air PC Cases of 2026

Seven expansion slots is the number that matters on the AL01. Most open frames give you a board, one card, and not much else; this one has room for a second GPU, a capture card, and a network card at once, which is what multi-GPU testing and constant hardware swapping actually look like. The 440mm-wide body leaves clearance around the board, and there are two 3.5-inch positions instead of one.

Mounting is where it costs you. The pre-drilled holes do not line up with every ATX board, including boards that fall inside the stated 305 x 245mm limit, so set the board on the frame and check the pattern before you thread a single standoff. Folded edges and triangular reinforcement plates give the 0.8mm steel more rigidity than 1.18 kg suggests, and the frame does not wobble once everything is tight, but start every screw loose before you torque any of them.

Where it earns its place is the long game. Reserved cable-routing holes behind the tray keep the 24-pin and front-panel runs out of the way, the bottom mount takes the same standard 150 x 86 x 140-250mm ATX power supplies as everything else here, and seven slots mean the frame outlives whatever is screwed to it. It is more work on day one than the JOYJOM and more flexible on day ninety. If you swap parts more often than you use them, the fiddly first assembly is a one-time cost.

The version worth buying here is the 1.ITX one, and that governs everything else: the frame is built around a Mini-ITX board in a body roughly 9.4 inches square, so a full ATX board is not going in it however the wider family's bullet points read. What you get in exchange is aluminum instead of stamped steel, 2 kg of it, with a finish that looks deliberate on a desk rather than improvised. That is the whole case for paying more than the steel frames, and it is a good one if the machine is going to be visible.

For a small build, the flexibility is real. It takes ATX, SFX, and 1U power supplies, which matters in a frame this size, because a full-size ATX unit eats most of the floor and an SFX unit gives that space back. Air and water cooling are both supported, so a small AIO or a short custom loop has somewhere to live, and four internal drive positions is generous for something this compact.

The caveats deserve naming. There is no stated warranty, so buy it somewhere with a return window you are willing to use during the build. Assembly is straightforward but the kit leans on small plastic parts alongside the machined aluminum, and the frame rewards care rather than force when you are fitting panels. Where all that adds up is a Mini-ITX build that lives in sight: the metal is the point, and this is the only frame here that looks designed rather than bent.

Ten layers is the pitch, and it only makes sense if you are running more than one machine. As a rack for a NAS, a router box, and a render node, the Yeiwenl earns its floor space: each layer takes a board up to 330 x 330mm, which covers E-ATX and the older X79 and X99 workstation boards that most frames in this group will not accept.

It also carries the most storage here, two 3.5-inch drives and four SSDs per layer, and the alloy steel rack is stiff enough that a loaded layer does not sag when you slide a board home. The 435mm width, 540mm height, and 240mm depth are the numbers to measure against your room, because this is the biggest thing in the group by a wide margin and it does not get smaller when you fill only one layer.

Our reservation is that most people do not need it. Assembly is a two-handed job the first time, and starting every screw before you tighten any of them is the difference between a square rack and a leaning one. For a single gaming build the budget frames do the same work for far less, and nothing about a ten-layer rack makes a one-PC desk tidier. The layers and the board size are what you are paying for, and they are only worth it if you will use them.

This is the same recipe as our top pick, from the brand that also makes the stackable rack: 0.8mm SPCC, black sand-grain paint, boards up to 305 x 245mm, a standard ATX power supply in the 150 x 86 x 140-250mm window, and one SSD plus one HDD. The listing is unusually clear that the power supply, SSD, and HDD are not in the box, which saves you the surprise most flat-pack frames spring on you.

We rank it behind the JOYJOM rather than alongside it, and the reason is simple enough: on paper the two frames do the same job, and the JOYJOM is our pick at the same money because its mounting hardware is the better bet. If the JOYJOM is out of stock, or you want a second bench because one board is always mid-test at your place, nothing on this spec sheet disqualifies it. The steel gauge, the drive count, and the two-year manufacturer warranty all match.

Its limit is the top pick's limit: 305 x 245mm boards, one drive of each type, and no expansion-slot capacity worth bragging about. As a spare, a wall of test rigs, or something to keep in the closet for the next troubleshooting weekend, that is plenty. As the only frame in a machine you plan to keep growing, it is not.