EVGA DG-77 Tempered Glass Gaming Case Review

For an aggressively priced mid-tower chassis EVGA has done a really good job at including a few modern features that modern system builders are looking for.  The first of these is personalization.  Everyone loves to make something theirs either by the unique build or by changing something with the case.   Inside the box you’ll get many of the installation goodies you’ll need like PSU panels and screws but you’ll also get replacement buttons for each of the thumb screws. 

As you may have noticed every one of the thumb screws features the EVGA “E” and by default come with a white background.  If you wanted black screws simply pull off the button cover and replace them with the included black ones.

The sticker on the front of the DG-77 shows the model number and yes, you guessed it the included sticker pack allows you to swap the color or stack them for a rather cool shadow effect.  (some skill may be required)

I had mentioned earlier how the DG-77 comes with an RGB LED controller and here it is.  You’ll get six  4-pin LED strip connections with two of them being consumed by the EVGA Logo backlighting.

You’ll need the DG-Tuner software to control the lighting and to access the K-Boost feature.  Sadly there is no provision for a fan controller in the DG-77.

The final feature and arguably the most exciting is the vertical GPU mount.  Mounting a GPU vertically is pretty straight forward and requires two key items, a PCI Express extension cable and somewhere to secure the GPU.

Some cases do this by building the vertical mount into the case which is not only extremely stable but also looks really good.  With the DG-77 you need to do a few more things.

First mount the extension cable to the top of the PSU Shroud using standard motherboard stand-offs and the plastic stabilizer.  Next attach the replacement mounting bracket to your video card and slide it into the case from the back and drop it into the PCI Express slot.  Secure it with two screws and you are done.

As a case modder I’m all for vertical mounted GPUs however there are right ways to do them and some rather kludgy one.  This one in the DG-77 is one of the latter.  

First of all mounting the extension cable using standoffs isn’t all that stable and tends to rock around until you get the video card mounted completely.  The vertical bracket used to secure the video card is only for a single screw and on a thinly bent piece of metal.  Read: easy to bend out of shape. 

And finally, and maybe the biggest of them, is that the video card sits inside the case.  Yes, it lines up to the painted edge of the tempered glass but is way inside the case requiring some careful finger work to get cables installed and cards with an external exhaust vents no longer exhaust outside the case.   They do when installed normally but not when installed vertical.

The last part isn’t “that” big deal since no real video card coolers exhaust outside the case anymore but, I see this implementation of vertical mounting to be based more on aesthetics over functionality when it could have very easily been both with very little effort.