MSI MAG Forge 112R

Arriving just in time to take on rival Gigabyte’s latest classic tower chassis (the C301 Glass), MSI’s $89.99 MAG Forge 112R PC case comes in at a $20 lower price, despite packing lots of RGB gloss and offering a roomy interior that can even house an Extended ATX (EATX) motherboard in a pinch. A look at this case's dimensions could help to explain exactly how MSI is able to undercut its rival on price, and our testing reveals whether those cost-saving measures were worthwhile. TLDR: The Forge is an able enough case, but it needs to fall in price a bit to make sense in today's budget-case market. If you have the dough, go for the Gigabyte; if not, Montech's Air 903 Max is a worthy budget alternative.

We’re going to step a bit out of order on this occasion to talk about a motherboard-shaped elephant in the room: Why are we calling the MAG Forge 112R an EATX model when MSI itself doesn’t apply that label?

After all, the motherboard tray is deep enough to hold a behemoth 13-inch-deep board, and it even has the extra column of standoff holes at the front it would need. In the below photo, we labeled the holes needed for Mini-ITX with an “I,” MicroATX with an “M,” ATX with an “A,” and EATX with an “E.”

Perhaps it’s just that MSI didn’t want to include all 12 standoffs needed to fully support the largest boards, but it’s also true that the front of the motherboard tray is drilled to hold two 2.5-inch drives, and boards longer than 11 inches will jut into the space meant for those drives. We’re not sure about MSI's marketing reasons, but it’s still an EATX design just like its Gigabyte rival.

Other than the obvious aesthetic differences, one of the ways the MAG Forge 112R stands apart from its more-expensive rival is that it’s 2 inches shorter in mounting depth. That should make it ideal for placement on smaller desks, and it also cuts weight: Even with its tempered-glass side panel, this more compact model comes in at a feathery 12.6 pounds.

Another way MSI saved money is by nixing the USB 3.2 Type-C connector, and that presents a small problem for us, in that most mainstream cases give you at least one high-bandwidth front panel connector (be it a full-bandwidth Type-C, the ancient eSATA of a decade ago, or even the IEEE-1394 headers of a bygone era). You still get the pair of USB 3.2 Type-A (Gen 1) ports required of the value segment, and an LED mode button tips the presence of a built-in ARGB controller that could elevate the MAG Forge 112R to something like a mainstream case.

Our external dimension measurements may differ a little from MSI’s because ours include the thumbscrews that hold the glass side panel and the expansion-card tab that sticks out the back. MSI differs from its rival once again by using knockout PCIe slot covers that can’t be screwed back on after being broken off, once again tagging the MAG Forge 112R with a budget-level feature.

The MAG Forge 112R’s front fan mount has screw slots for three 140mm and three 120mm fans and comes equipped with the latter in ARGB form. As with the discrepancy in motherboard compatibility, MSI rates its front panel as supporting only two of the larger 140mm fans even though we were able to fit three of these behind its front plastic fascia. We even checked its compatibility with one of our 420mm-format closed-loop coolers and found that front-panel cables that protrude from the top panel were only thing preventing this larger radiator from fitting. There's a lot of room up there.

Behind the front-panel connectors are the top-panel mounts for two 140mm or 120mm fans. Pushing the cables out of the way gives you around 12.25 inches of clearance for top-panel radiators, which should be enough for most 240mm-formation closed-loop coolers but may not fit some 280mm-format versions.

Also: while the top-panel fan mounts clear the top edge of the motherboard by 2.2 inches, the 1.25 inches of horizontal offset for 240mm-format coolers drops below half an inch with a 280mm-format part. That, in turn, could make cable routing to the motherboard's top edge arduous if you opt for the wider radiator format.

The bottom panel features a tab-secured dust-filter sheet over the power supply’s air inlet, plus two sets of four holes for the screws that secure an inner 3.5-inch drive cage. That drive cage leaves only around 32mm of clearance for front-panel radiators by default, and moving it back 30mm to fit larger coolers reduces the power supply space by the same 30mm.

Speaking of dust filters, the front panel mesh doubles as a dust filter and a decorative element that covers the intake fans. Its security tabs are folded, so we’d recommend cleaning it with compressed air (or at least a vacuum cleaner and brush) rather than rinsing it out.

The steel right side panel hides a removable 2.5-inch drive tray, the power-supply tunnel, a dual 3.5-inch drive cage, and a mess of cables, many of which lead to the included ARGB controller.

The ARGB controller supports around 23 lighting modes across up to six devices. Holding the top panel's mode button for a couple of seconds allows it to switch to a hub mode, in which it accepts input from another controller (such as the motherboard). Some of the cable mess comes from the inclusion of a passthrough pigtail on the ARGB signal wire of every ARGB fan.

The MAG Forge 112R’s installation kit comes in a plastic bag tied to the lower tray of the 3.5-inch/2.5-inch drive cage. The default cage location leaves only 206mm of space for a power supply and cables, but users who want to maximize space for both a front-panel radiator and a super-long power supply have the option of removing the drive cage entirely.

The MAG Forge 112R doesn’t include the vertical graphics card brackets of its more-expensive rival, and its installation kit is more basic overall. It includes only four motherboard standoffs, for one thing, and those who care to scroll up to the photo with all the writing on it will notice that only six of the nine ATX standoffs are factory-installed. Builders who would like to take advantage of the motherboard tray’s support for EATX boards with 12 standoffs will probably want to know that these are a quarter-inch deep and 6-32 thread (both Imperial sizes).

Also above is a three-fan/4-pin PWM splitter for the front fans, which works even though the fans are only 3-pin non-PWM models. Speed control relies instead on the ability of most motherboards to control fan voltage.

The two slot covers in the installation kit above are for filling the gaps left from installing and removing a graphics card, as shown below. The original breakaway slot covers can’t be reinstalled once removed. We also noticed that the card bracket cover slides open only 0.8 inch, which may make it difficult for some cards to be installed, and that the card screw holes are unthreaded, which means that users who need the security of screws will have to force the tapered end of their 6-32 screws into an untapped hole in the backplane. The steel sheet is soft enough to give way to the screw threads, but you won’t want to add and remove the screw many times.

Front-panel header cables include HD Audio for the headphone and microphone jacks, a front-panel LED/button group that includes the hard drive activity LED and reset switch that are missing from certain competing models, and a USB 3.0 front-panel header that’s USB 3.2 Gen 1 compliant. The cables for the ARGB controller include one SATA connector for a power-supply connection and a 3-pin ARGB for motherboard attachment.

This is how our full ATX motherboard fits, leaving plenty of room for boards that are far deeper than our standard ATX tester.

And, as cheaply as the case is made, MSI’s MAG Forge 112R sure looks great when holding our build. with the included fans all fired up.

Here's a rundown of the standard test parts that we used in our sample build for benchmarking. (We used our standard ATX board, in this case.)

Our charts reveal one completely average case, the wood-faced Fractal Design North, with a 4-degree CPU temperature advantage over the MAG Forge 112R. We tried again and got even worse results (by 1 degree C) than the shown values, assumed rounding favored the first test, and left the original value in the chart. As for the other rivals, at least Gigabyte’s C301 Glass beat the Forge by fewer degrees.

Our motherboard’s voltage-regulator temperature suffered with the test board mounted in the MAG Forge 112R, though only by a single degree versus the C301 Glass.

A few degrees is hardly a big result in terms of graphics-card temperature, but it looks bad when it’s charted like that. The rival C301 Glass finished fifth out of six, but at least that case stays within 1 degree of the third- and fourth-place cases.

If you were expecting the case with the highest temperatures to have the lowest noise measurements, we hate to burst your bubble. This is also the chart that most clearly indicates why getting comparable results required the Montech Air 903 Max to be tested twice. (See that review for the nuances around that winning budget case's fan noise and tested speeds.)

Now, the Gigabyte C301 Glass and the Forge are far from the only similar cases on the market, for course. But the $20 price difference between the products of these rival brands masks a difference of more than $20 in features, and that’s before we consider that the Gigabyte case we tested was white: Gigabyte charges an extra $10 for that color. Black-to-black, the difference between the MAG Forge 112R and black version of the C301 Glass drops to only $10.

Yet, in the Montech mentioned above, we’ve recently tested a case that's $10 cheaper than even the MAG Forge 112R. Like the MSI and Gigabyte cases, it comes equipped with four fans and an ARGB controller. Like the Gigabyte model, it also includes a USB 3.2 Type-C port. It even adds a PWM fan hub to its ARGB controller board and comes in the white finish that Gigabyte charges extra for. And that’s why we have to cut the MAG Forge 112R short: It's fitted out like an under-$80 budget gaming case, but it comes to the U.S. with a roughly $20 surcharge. Had it been priced at $70 when we tested it, the MAG Forge 112R could have been a nicely positioned budget gaming case. As it is now, it needs a price cut. We’ll see if the market agrees and complies.