I recently put together an $800 gaming PC build and I used a little-known budget case to put it all in, the Okinos Aqua 3.
I was impressed by how good the Aqua 3 was for the price it came in at, and so I did a full written and video review on it.
Afterwards, Okinos reached out to me to see if I wanted to review the bigger case in the Aqua lineup and, in this post I’ll be taking a look at the Okinos Aqua 7.
But, before I get into what it was like building in this case, first let me go over all of its specifications and features.
Overview, Specifications, & Features
Okinos has three total Aqua-series options, the 3, 5, and 7, and all are panoramic-style cases.
The 7 is the largest in the series, and the only one of the three that can fit a standard-ATX motherboard.
The Aqua 7 comes with six 120mm PWM ARGB fans pre-installed. So, that’s three more fans than the Aqua 3 and the Aqua 3’s fans AREN’T PWM fans, so that’s a nice upgrade for the Aqua 7.
Another interesting feature for the Aqua 7 is that five of the fans (the two fans on the side and the three fans located at the bottom) spin in reverse direction.
Basically, what this means is that these five fans actually intake air into the case, despite looking like they’re set up to exhaust air out of the case.
In the Aqua 3, all of the fans are set to exhaust air out of the case, and if you wanted to have a configuration that brought air in, you’d have to flip the fans around and then you’d see the bracketed-size of the fan, which isn’t as aesthetically pleasing to look at.
So, by using reverse direction fans, Okinos has provided the best of both worlds… providing both the ability to intake air into the case without hurting the aesthetics of the ARGB fans.
I also purchased three additional Okinos ARGB PWM case fans for $10 to add to the top panel of this case, all of which will be set to exhaust, and so I think there should be a good balance between intaking and exhausting air out of the case, and, of course, there will be a ton of ARGB lighting to work with.
The top panel of this case can also support up to a 360mm long radiator, so whether you want to do a custom cooling setup, or get a larger AIO, you can do that in this case.
You can also replace the two fans on the side of the case with a 240mm radiator. Just note, though, that this will dramatically reduce the clearance for your graphics card to just 270mm, as an AIO installed here will stick out far enough to block the installation of a longer graphics card.
Without an AIO installed on the side, the Aqua 7 can house graphics cards up to 410mm long, which is enough clearance to hold all the way up to an RTX 4090.
So, there are no graphics card limitations with this case.
And, for air coolers, the case can hold options up to 160mm tall.
The front panel on the Aqua 7 comes with an audio jack, two USB 3.0 ports, and a USB-C port. Unfortunately, I don’t have a USB-C header on my motherboard, so I won’t be able to use that.
The bottom compartment comes with a small 3.5-inch storage bay, but it can easily be removed by removing these two screws at the bottom.
Once those screws are removed, the bay easily slides out, giving you a lot more room to hide cables in.
And, finally, the case comes with a fan and ARGB controller preinstalled. You can connect 6-fans and 6-ARGB connections to the controller and it does require a SATA power connection from your power supply.
Since I added three additional OKINOS ARGB fans, I did need to use a couple of fan and ARGB splitters to get everything connected.
Alright, that’s a general run down of the specifications and features, so let’s now get into what it was like to build inside of this case.
Building in the Aqua 7
I took all of the parts from a $1,000 gaming PC build I put together at the beginning of the year, which was housed in a Phanteks P400A, and I moved everything into this build.
I also took this time to upgrade the Ryzen 5 5600X in my old build to a Ryzen 7 5700X3D, as I’ll be benchmarking the 5700X3D in an upcoming video/post to compare it to the 5600X.
Overall, building in the Aqua 7 was a positive experience.
For some pros of this case, I really like how both glass panels are toolless and can easily be popped off with a little bit of force.
And, with the front glass panel removed, you have a lot of room to work with inside the case, and it allows you access from angles that most cases don’t offer, and that all definitely helps with the building process.
Another pro of the Aqua 7 is the preinstalled fan and ARGB controller. All of the fans and their ARGB lights are pre-connected and so, as long as you don’t want to add any additional fans or lighting, all you have to do is connect SATA power from your power supply to the controller, and then you’ll just need to connect the controller to a 3-pin ARGB header and fan header on your motherboard.
Again, I did add an additional three fans to the top panel of the case, so I had to free up some room on the controller by using a couple of ARGB-splitters and fan splitters.
Thermals
With nine total fans, plus a Thermalright Burst Assasin CPU cooler, I was able to achieve excellent thermals…
I benchmarked the system in Cinebench’s multi-core CPU test and the Ryzen 7 5700X3D averaged about 75-degrees Celsius, which is well within normal operating temperatures for the 5700X3D.
And, I also ran Metro Exodus’ benchmark tool, and neither the 5700X3D or the 7800XT exceeded 60-degrees.
I’m not sure how much adding the three additional fans helped, as I didn’t run the tests without the top fans, but overall the thermals on the case are very good with how I have it configured.
Something to Be Aware Of…
One thing that you’ll want to be aware of if you get the Aqua 7 is that, with the bottom fans installed, it will be very difficult to screw in the three bottom-most motherboard screws…
…and it will also be nearly impossible to make the connections at the bottom of your motherboard…
I had to temporarily removed the two rear-most bottom fans to mount the motherboard and make those connections.
It’s not really a big deal and I don’t think there’s a way Okinos could have handled this better, but it’s something you should be aware of if you’re planning on building inside of this case.
But, overall, it is a fairly minor issue compared to what the case offers for the price it comes in at…
Conclusion
All-in-all, I think the Aqua 7 is a solid case and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is looking for a fairly affordable panoramic style case that comes with a lot of ARGB lighting preinstalled.
But, that does it for this review. If you’re interested in picking up this case, you can get it through this link on Amazon.
That is an affiliate link and if you purchase anything from Amazon after clicking on the link I might receive a small commission. This greatly helps support my website and any support is appreciated.
But, of course, you can always just go to Amazon and search for the Aqua 7 as well.
In any case, thank you all for reading, I hope you found this review helpful.
