Oftentimes, Asus likes to market its brands as high-end alternatives to those of its competitors, so we weren’t too surprised when it released a kitted-out $500 ROG-themed case, or even when it followed up with its $270 ProArt effort: Anyone can get an Asus-themed case if they're willing to pay the cost. Getting into the mainstream market, where price actually matters, is a far tougher task. To tackle that, here comes Asus' more budget-minded TUF line. A $149.99 effort, the TUF Gaming GT302 ARGB is a PC tower case with support for the company's cable-hiding Back to the Future (BTF) reverse-connector motherboards. It delivered mixed results on our tests but is a solid option for builders seeking to dabble in the BTF ecosystem for the first time.

Design: Extra Slots, Rear-Connector Support

You can get the TUF Gaming GT302 ARGB in white or black motifs. This chassis might get noticed for its triple 140mm intake fans, which are barely hidden behind a grid-pattern vented face, but users with time to count will also see an unusual eight expansion slots. That used to be a common sight—back when multiple-graphics-card SLI and CrossFireX were popular—as it allowed a double-slot graphics card (how quaint!) to fit into the bottom slot of a standard ATX motherboard. We’re not sure why a new case would have an eighth slot, but better to have an extra slot and not need it than to need one and not have it…right?

The TUF's front-panel ports are actually on the front panel, right up along its top edge, and include two USB 3.x Type-A and a USB Gen 2x2 Type-C. A four-contact headset (headphone/microphone combo) jack, a power button, and a reset button are also in the mix.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Here’s a better look at that eight-slot expansion-card panel, which sits between the I/O shield and the power-supply bay, as you’d expect in a chassis of this layout. A 140mm exhaust fan is affixed to narrow slots that allow it to be moved upward (toward the top of the motherboard), and the mount includes a second set of screw slots to match 120mm fans. Meanwhile, the power-supply mount is screw-hole-patterned to support flipping the power supply, if desired.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

The handle of a slide-out dust filter also sticks out of the back of the case, allowing for easier cleaning at the power-supply air inlet. The grid-pattern ventilation of the steel right-side panel is also easier to see in this close-up.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Affixed with six snaps, the steel top panel pulls off to allow access to a metal-mesh dust cover beneath, which is secured to its underside via magnetic strips. The front panel also pulls off, but its filter is a finer nylon material attached to a rigid plastic frame. Oh, and as for those two holes on the back edge of the top panel? Those align to two threaded holes in the chassis to allow users to further secure the lid against accidental removal when moving the finished build around.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

The GT302 ARGB’s motherboard tray is certainly long enough to support full-spec (13-inch-deep) Extended ATX (EATX) motherboards, but a plastic cover over two of the vertical cable passages prevents boards longer than 10.9-inch from fitting. Asus refers to this design as being Extended ATX up to a 10.9-inch limit, but designers wedded to old-school form factors would point out that any case labeled "EATX" should be compatible with all EATX boards. (That’s the point of having names for form factors!)

There’s also a big hole for attaching a CPU-cooler support plate to the back of an installed motherboard, and several more holes that match the back-facing port locations of Asus’ BTF reverse-connector motherboards in both ATX and MicroATX format.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

In addition to the grid pattern of air vents, the top of the power-supply tunnel has three holes for passing cables and one for tucking in radiators. The problem here is that even though the front panel is more than long enough to fit most 420mm radiators, the hole behind the fans is only 44mm deep. That’s not enough space to tilt in a long radiator, so Asus only rates the front panel as supporting 280mm units. Adroit builders might notice that the fan holes are 140mm wide at the center and try putting in a long radiator with the fans removed, then sliding the fans in between, but Asus isn’t recommending anything that requires a builder to be…crafty.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Meanwhile, the top radiator mount is removable via two screws and two slides. There’s only 412mm of length to mount fans underneath, which means that you have sufficient space here for triple 120mm fans but only enough room for two 140mm units. 

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Two 2.5-inch drive trays mount to the back of the motherboard tray, behind the front panel, and a two-drive cage fills the forward portion of the power-supply tunnel. Rated by Asus to support power supplies up to 220mm in mounting depth, we measured the power-supply bay depth at 257mm.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

The two lower drive trays are sized for 3.5-inch drives, and they have extra holes to fit 2.5-inch drives, as well.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Building With the GT302 ARGB

The GT302 ARGB installation kit includes several zip-style cable ties, two knurled screws for adding more security to the back edge of the snap-away top panel, three replacement plastic snap latches, a three-slot vertical card adapter panel, and a bag of screws. The screw kit includes a standoff socket with Phillips #2 head on top, in addition to its hex/Phillips combo-head power-supply screws, M3 screws for installing the motherboard and 2.5-inch drives, and  #6-30 panhead screws for installing 3.5-inch drives.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

The GT302 ARGB’s front-panel cable set is refreshingly simple, reduced to a single HD Audio for the headset jack, a combo lead for the power and reset buttons, an internal Type-E that feeds the front-panel Type-C port, and an old-fashioned 19-pin USB 3.x lead for the two Type-A ports. Each fan also includes a PWM input, a PWM passthrough, and an ARGB input, and Asus handles the lack of ARGB passthrough by connecting all the fans to a single four-device splitter cable. As a result, fan connections require only a single PWM header and a single ARGB header from the motherboard.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Asus places its vertical cable passages around an inch farther forward on the GT302 ARGB, compared with most competing cases, but that extra inch was just a little too much to allow our power supply’s 12VHPWR cable to reach, so we had to run it through a hole in the power-supply tunnel instead. Had our test build been a permanent installation, we might have zip-tied it to two of the motherboard’s standoffs.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Here's the finished build above and below. The latter viewing angle conceals our hastily positioned graphics-card power lead.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Testing the Asus TUF Gaming: Good Air With Some Noise

Our 2024 test configuration is designed to pull around 700 watts from the wall, though only around 200 watts of that is due to the graphics-card load. The rest goes to CPU load, power supply losses, and supporting components. Below is the lineup of standard ATX-build test components we used...

Note that we tested with our standard test motherboard, not a BTF reverse connector model, for consistency of results. We'll do a test build with the TUF using an Asus BTF board in a separate story coming soon after this review. 

As for the results? We’ve not seen a case get a clean sweep in our benchmarks yet, but the GT302 ARGB’s CPU and voltage-regulator temperatures got us excited. Then we saw the mid-pack GPU temperatures and thought to ourselves that a win is still a win even if it’s only two out of three.

We wouldn’t allow ourselves to get too excited by the leadership seen above, because we had already noticed the noises emanating from the GT302 ARGB long before we saw the thermal results. That vented right-side panel may help with the thermals but does the case no favors in our acoustic-results chart.

The case is designed to accept the glass or mesh panels on either the left or right side. (You can interchange them.) So, we ran our acoustic test with the right side as mesh and not mesh for comparison's sake.

Verdict: A Reasonable Pick for Cable Smiting

We’re not sure if we love the aesthetic, but the grid pattern does stand out from other cases we’ve recently tested. Add to that its support for Asus’ other BTF components and its excellent cooling of components in the upper rear corner, and the TUF Gaming GT302 ARGB should be popular with Asus loyalists who want to give the hidden-connector trend a try, especially if they are working up a build using the company's special TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super BTF Edition card, which has no power cable connectors on top but uses a special motherboard "Gold Finger" power connector that plugs straight into specific Asus BTF-compliant motherboards. We'll be featuring a special build in this case using that card and other BTF components soon after this review.