Gear Seekers has built up the XWORKS 70 xFrame open SFF case or, more accurately, frame. The XWORKS follows the traditional sandwich layout, and is made of extremely high quality aluminum. The build comes out extremely clean thanks to the internal spine of the case housing most of the wiring. Assembly is flat pack style, and you can install a up to a 3 slot GPU of infinite length into the frame. CPU cooling is a traditional heatsink and fan with a 40mm to 70mm height recommendation to stay within the frame itself. However, nothing is stopping you from putting a massive tower heatsink on the unit.
The XWORKS 70 xFrame without flaws, and Gear Seekers runs into a few. Be sure to watch his video and subscribe.
Open frame “cases” have become more popular in the SFF world, and as long as you don’t have kids, pets, clumsy family that spill things, and/or poor maintenance skills, they’re a real treat to work with. My primary SFFN test bench is a an open frame style case, and has been a reliable workhorse. However, I do keep it far away from anything that could cause issues to the system. That said, it’s also been one of the quietest systems I’ve ever used thanks to the basically infinite airflow. One flaw though is that electrical noises are more obvious as there is nothing to dull them on the way to your ear.
One suggestion I have to anyone considering an open frame style build is to install the absolutely fastest PCIe riser cable you can from the get go. Going back to do so later often involves basically a complete rebuild.
Check out the Gear Seekers Video below.
