The $99.99 Hyte Y50 RGB is exactly the result you’d expect to see if a smart PC case designer looked at Hyte’s older Y60 and was tasked with maximizing what was possible for half the money. The quirky, distinct styling is substantially the same, and a minor feature reduction that came clear as we installed our parts seemed an acceptable trade-off for the price drop. Available in flavorful colors such as Strawberry Milk, Taro Milk, and Black Cherry (a black-and-red combo) alongside basic black and white, this is a prime example of budget trimming done right. Pairing the panoramic aesthetics of Hyte’s earlier cases with smart cable routing and lots of built-in cooling, this is one of the most compelling $100 showcase PC chassis on the market and a clear Editors’ Choice winner.
I received the Snow White version of the Y50. (To my eyes, this is more of an arctic white with a slightly bluish cast.) You’ll want to choose your color based on the motif your build is going for, as well as the color schemes of your main parts, such as the motherboard and GPU.
Designed to show off your internal components, the half-wrap glass with a clipped corner has been a signature part of Hyte’s high-end case models, and here it has trickled down to mainstream pricing. Of course, in a build like this, you may want to install a vertical video card, but this case isn’t suited for that. The Y50’s lower price meant Hyte had to remove the spendy PCI Express riser cable and vertical bracket that its Y60 included. Also, the PCI Express card mounting zone is designed for “ordinary”-orientation GPU installs.
On the upside, the Y50 RGB has one more fan than the Y60, and the new fan configuration is all—as the name implies—digitally addressable RGB (technically, ARGB). Plus, for its three stacked fans, Hyte uses a reversed-blade fan design, allowing the Y50 RGB to hide its fan motors on the inlet side. All three of these fans are joined by a triple-fan frame at the front of the case’s right side. That keeps cabling clean and easy.
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External connectors follow a familiar layout, with the power button inside a lighted power-indicator ring, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports to its sides, a headset combo jack, and a Gen 2x2 Type-C port, all squeezed into the slanted outer edge of the case’s front bottom. The 3.5mm combo jack works with both stereo headphones and microphone-integrated headsets.
Behind that panel, though, is another design curiosity: Hyte sinks the floor to its right to make extra room for 360mm-format radiators up to 410mm long, raises the floor to its left to conceal bottom-mounted fans up to 32mm thick (these you’d have to provide yourself), and makes the center section wide enough (around 4 inches) to display various choices of novelty—if so desired.
The dual 120mm bottom fan mount is factory covered in the Y50 RGB’s only dust filter.
Around back are the seven-slot card panel, a 120mm exhaust fan that you can adjust up and down, a power supply flange in the right side chamber, and a decoratively plated Hyte logo case badge. The two screws beneath the case badge secure an internal drive cage.
A pattern of vents on the Y50 RGB’s right side-panel covers its triple-fan mount from top to bottom, then turns toward the rear to vent the power supply.
The Y50 RGB’s top fan mount is unusual in that it has three rows of screw slots on both its left and right sides. Using the outer mounts lets you fit up to two 140mm fans or a 280mm-format radiator, but smaller 120mm units fit in all three locations. While we’d generally recommend installing a 360mm-format radiator toward the outside to gain more motherboard clearance, doing so limits radiator space (behind the front’s angled glass) to 400mm. Moving that same 360mm-format radiator inward one slot gives it 410mm of space, and moving it all the way in gives it 420mm of space.
Having considered those measurements, we still found that a radiator around 406mm long fit the outer slots, simply because the radius at the edge of its end cap just cleared the angled glass.
Notice how some of the cable passages that surround the motherboard tray in previous photos disappear in the dead-on shot. That’s because Hyte filled those holes with plastic guides that only face upward from the top of the board and forward from its front. Lacking those guides, holes around the outer edge of the motherboard tray are actually designed for reverse-connector full-ATX motherboards of the Asus BTF, Gigabyte Stealth, and MSI Project Zero type.
Viewing the interior from this angle should quell most concerns about top-mounted cooler clearance, seeing as the large gap (more than 70mm) above the motherboard mounting area is clearly visible.
A quick look into the power supply chamber gives us a better inkling of the shape of those cable guides. You can also see the drive cage that sits above the power supply bay and the cable passages that feed the side fans.
The cage has space for two 3.5-inch and two 2.5-inch drives. The 3.5-inch drive section has a few extra holes to allow up to four 2.5-inch drives to be mounted on one edge. The entire piece can hold up to six 2.5-inch drives if desired.
The Y50 RGB’s accessory loadout breaks out as follows:
A bag of M3 truss-head screws (for securing 2.5-inch drives)
#6-32 panhead screws (for the motherboard standoffs and any 3.5-inch drives)
Combo-head screws (for installing a power supply)
Long-shaft screws in two different lengths (for installing bottom-panel fans)
A Phillips-drive standoff socket
A replacement panel snap
Three reusable nylon cable ties, plus ordinary zip ties
The screws designated for 25mm- and 30mm-thick fans are actually 28mm and 35mm long, providing plenty of threads to hold the 25.4mm and 31.8mm thicknesses that you’re more likely to encounter.
The Y50 RGB’s front panel connects to our motherboard via a nine-pin combined F_PANEL lead for buttons and indicator LED, an HD Audio lead for its headset combo jack, a first-generation 19-pin lead for its dual USB 3.2 Type-A ports, and a Gen 2x2 (Type-E) lead for its Type-C port. The ARGB and PWM fan cables shown connect the conjoined triple fan assembly at the front; a matching pair of cables that connect the rear fan isn’t shown.
While the ARGB cables are long enough to chain together to a single ARGB header at the top or bottom of our motherboard, the matched-length PWM fan-motor cables don’t have a pass-through provision.
I’ll be adding our graphics card after installing those cables. The boxed-in PCI Express slot panels in some other cases would have made plugging in our card a straight shot, but here I had to angle it in. The Y50 RGB’s 26mm opening, at least, provides plenty of wiggle room to get the card onto its external retention-screw bracket.
Hyte quotes a maximum graphics card length of 360mm, but that’s merely the size of the side panel’s opening. Because the back of the case sits 10mm behind the opening, the space behind the 45-degree corner panel is at least 370mm. Also, since our 305mm-by-119mm graphics card sits 46mm inside the opening, it leaves 111mm (65mm plus 46mm) of forward clearance. Some cards are, of course, taller than our sample, but the math for clearing the case’s 45-degree glass panel still applies. (In other words, your 400mm-long card had better not be more than 135mm tall.)
The finished build looks bright, and our moderate-size graphics card leaves plenty of space to display a collectible of some sort on the Y50 RGB’s corner floor, if that’s your kind of thing.
One final build note: Those hoping to squeeze in a gigantic graphics card by temporarily removing the corner glass will find it secured with four screws at its corners. Also, two of its screws are hidden behind the glass front panel, and the glass front panel’s three screws are hidden behind the right side panel. That’s a lot of unscrewing around for a case advertised as having “tool-less glass and metal panels.”
We’ll be comparing the Y50 RGB to several similarly shaped cases using the following hardware, which comprises our standard ATX-case testing kit...
The inexpensive Y50 RGB stands far above its expensive sibling in CPU cooling, simply because the pricey Hyte Y70 Touch Infinite ships with no fans of its own. It still falls mid-pack overall.
The mid-pack Y50 RGB slides up a notch in sound pressure level, falling behind only the Fractal Design Pop 2 Vision RGB and the fan-free Y70 Touch Infinite.
Fractal Design’s foreshortened Pop 2 Vision RGB is the only case in our tests to outperform the Y50 RGB in both cooling and noise, and the differences between these two are not nearly as small as the price: The Pop 2 Vision has its own RGB controller but does not have a Gen 2x2 interface for its Type-C port and cannot support a second radiator upon its side fan mount. While each manufacturer can point to the other’s missing feature in a claim to value supremacy, buyer preferences will settle the debate.
Final Thoughts
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Hyte Y50 RGB
- 5.0 - Exemplary: Near perfection, ground-breaking
- 4.5 - Outstanding: Best in class, acts as a benchmark for measuring competitors
- 4.0 - Excellent: A performance, feature, or value leader in its class, with few shortfalls
- 3.5 - Good: Does what the product should do, and does so better than many competitors
- 3.0 - Average: Does what the product should do, and sits in the middle of the pack
- 2.5 - Fair: We have some reservations, buy with caution
- 2.0 - Subpar: We do not recommend, buy with extreme caution
- 1.5 - Poor: Do not buy this product
- 1.0 - Dismal: Don't even think about buying this product
Read Our Editorial Mission Statement and Testing Methodologies.
At $99.99, the Y50 RGB distills Hyte's signature wrapped-glass aesthetic into a right-priced showcase chassis. You trade away creature comforts like the Hyte Y60’s bundled vertical GPU riser, but Hyte compensates for its trims with a bank of clean-looking, reverse-flow RGB fans, back-connect motherboard support, and a fast Gen 2x2 Type-C front port. It’s not a case for extreme-cooling or high-airflow enthusiasts, but you get an admirable balance among acoustic performance, thermal headroom, and fun, candy-color options. It delivers a head-turning design at a lower price than you’d expect.
About Our Expert
Years back, when a small website called out for product-review editors. I leapt at the opportunity: I’d just wrapped up a four-year stint as a systems supplier. That experience provided the credentials I’d need for the transition from industry supplier to industry observer. For one thing, I’d been the first source for an exposé on capacitor plague (“Got Juice?”) at EDN.
By that time, I’d already self-published some guidelines on hardcore PC stuff: pin-modifying processors to defeat compatibility checks and overclock non-overclockable systems. I saw a chance to get paid for my knowledge, and have since written more than a thousand pieces (many of them for the seminal tech site Tom's Hardware) before finding my latest opportunity: with PCMag.
System building. I've been known to take pictures of “wrong way” installations to help builders understand the difference.
PC overclocking, with an emphasis on user ease and component longevity
Motherboards, their infinite nuances and complexities
PC memory, its many variations, and how to configure and understand it
PC cases and PC cooling. The concepts may seem simple, but I help uncover the hidden problems.
Having a test system or two with modern hardware at hand means rarely needing to upgrade my office PC. My old reliable Intel-based workhorse desktop stands at the 6th Generation Core level with a 512GB SSD, 32GB of RAM, and gobs of external storage.
My trusty 3rd Gen Asus Zenbook Pro only comes out for remote conferences (not many of those in the past few years, alas), and even my Samsung Galaxy smartphone is a lower-end model that I bought to replace an old LG unit. Though my day-to-day work consumes the majority of my interest in tech, I've outfitted my home, in recent years, with a whole host of smart TVs.
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