Is it fish tank season? It seems the last month or so we’ve built our fair share! Luckily we do like a big glass showpiece of a PC. They’re typically spacious and can fit almost any hardware and always look amazing! Are we tired of fish tanks? Absolutely not, bring on another!
This time it is the turn of the King 65 Pro from Montech, it’s the new budget entry into the ‘King’ range. It was only a few weeks ago we were building the Montech x Gear Seekers King 95 Ultra, so this felt very familiar. The similarities between the two are striking, and the differences are largely aesthetic. So what has changed? Are there any noticeable differences in the build process or performance?
Case Overview
On plucking the King 65 Pro from its box we were pleasantly surprised by the level of tint on the glass, it’s unmistakably tinted, but not so much so that it’s difficult to see through. The other striking design feature is its angular design - the sleek curves of the King 95 have gone, replaced with 2 flat slabs of glass forming a right angle. Upon removing the glass there is some strong evidence that Montech are reusing the King 95 chassis, the rounded corners have been extended and squared off with a riveted in corner plate to hold the new side panels. The two cases have almost the same dimensions too, with the King 65 Pro being 4mm shorter. The lower height seems to come courtesy of the redesigned top panel, which is now a flat rectangle, whereas the King 95 top was slightly raised and shaped to the cases' rounded corners and protruding IO panel.
The general convention with Montech is that when their cases include ‘Pro’ in the name then it will come preloaded with fans. Here we have 2 x 140mm (ARGB) reverse blade and 1 x 120mm (ARGB). The fans are a different design to what we had expected, they’re a black framed unit with a white RGB fan in the centre, we were expecting a fully black unit with an RGB strip around the edge. The fans seem of good quality, and are all PWM which is a nice inclusion!
The second chamber of the case is spacious and well laid out. There is space for an ATX power supply, an area for additional storage drives and tons of space for cable management. The strapping which runs along the back of the motherboard leaves some wide channels so everything will be dealt with in a tidy and efficient manner. There is a fan and RGB hub at the top, with a button on the front of the case to control the RGB, which makes things nice and simple!
Case Specs and Hardware Support
Dimensions: (h)437 x (w)300 x (d)470mm
Motherboard support: ATX/mATX/ITX
Max graphics card length: 420mm
Max radiator length: 360mm
Max air cooler height: 175mm
Parts List
What Was It Like To Build In?
The case stripped down in the expected manner, there is a thumb turn screw on each side panel, once undone the panel's pop-off. The front and top also come off in a similar manner. To get into the rear chamber where the power supply will be located there are 2 screws to take out which allows a hinged door to swing open. The motherboard assembly was all as it should be. Once it was screwed in it did dawn on us that we hadn’t checked if the Arctic Freezer III 360 would fit - it’s a chunky radiator and its girth has caused us issues before. We got lucky, it fit, but with very little room to spare!
The cable management was as simple as I had wished, typically we’ll film a build, then when we get in the next morning I’ll finish off the cable management, but this took 10 mins on the night of filming. I’ve said it many times before, if you get a power supply with individually braided, flexible cables it makes cable management so much easier! It is why we use the TUF Gaming PSU’s so often!
Overall the build process was without incident, and a pleasure to complete. It should be easy enough for anyone to build in.
Airflow
The airflow afforded by this case was exactly as expected, the side and bottom fans took in a huge amount of cool air. The side fans kept the radiator up top well fed as well as cooling the motherboard. The bottom fans gave the graphics card more cool air than it is likely to ever need! The visualisation worked perfectly. Have a look at the build video to see for yourself!
Performance
It is our first use of the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X, so we’re very interested to see both how it performs and how hot it runs. As we decided to use the Arctic Freezer III for cooling we knew it should do well to keep the CPU cool, but would there be much noise? We’re pleased to say in all tests everything stayed cool, though under CPU stress testing the PC did get a bit loud (fans rose to 1200rpm)! Here are our results:
Ambient temp 19.8°C
Spider-Man Remastered
2560x1440
Very High
119-132 fps
59°C CPU
55°C GPU
Forza Horizon 5
2560x1440
Extreme
104-130 fps
44°C CPU
56°C GPU
CPU-Z
Max Temp 67°C
Fan Speed ~1200 rpm
CPUPower Draw 162w
Furmark2
2560x1440
Avg fps 146
Max temp 56°C
Hotspot 71°C
Roundup
The King 65 Pro has surprised us a little, given the current pricing ~£80 we were expecting it to be a much lesser version of the King 95 Pro. I guess in some way it is: it misses out on the curved glass, but yet the squared finish brings beauty of its own; the RGB strip on the front edge has gone, but yet we didn’t really notice; there are less included fans, but it is also cheaper! So really, it is a lesser case than the King 95 Pro, but the cost savings have been well thought out. The resulting product is high quality, aesthetically pleasing, compatible with masses of hardware and yet somehow very low cost. Is the King 65 Pro the King of value? In it's category, it is hard to find a better option for less. We enjoyed the build process, it was simple thanks to the size and space available in the case. Anyone could take on a build in this case, and have the end result look amazing, just take your time with the cable management.
Check out the full build video below.
Blog post written by Sam Thwaytes
Affiliate Links
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US Links
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MOBO: https://amzn.to/4eRsm9W
Cooler: https://amzn.to/4hdpgyI
Storage: https://amzn.to/40dcwBY
Fans: https://amzn.to/40gkuKR
Keyboard: https://amzn.to/3YfwOIi
Mouse: https://amzn.to/48fllxl
Monitor: https://amzn.to/4e7IIu7
UK Links
Case: Coming Soon!
Cooler: https://amzn.to/3BNyPEn
Storage: https://amzn.to/48fF93r
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Mouse: https://amzn.to/405iJ2V
Monitor: https://amzn.to/4778eh2
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