As with all flagship products, the MSI MEG Maestro 900R isn't designed to sell by the bucket load, although MSI would certainly love to see that no doubt. Instead, it's designed to showcase what a company can do, boosting its profile and getting you to buy its products over the competition's. Ultimately, if money isn't much of an object, and you're a hardcore PC enthusiast, there are lots of things here that will excite you.

The case looks fabulous, although we would tweak it in a few areas such as the roof RGB lighting and indeed the removable roof panel that doesn't entirely cover the ugly dust filter beneath. The glass panels being split into three sections rather than a single wraparound piece is perhaps not something you'd expect with a $700 case given the competition has cases like that, but in all honesty, the main panel is already very heavy.

Does the case look like it's worth the money? Well, yes and no. It's a little clunky and plastic-laden in places, and you'd be well within your rights to expect top to bottom luxury. It also lacks some cutting-edge features and reverts to archaic methods for items such as cable tidying, installing hard disks or securing fans and their mounts. We'd expect more at this price.

The weight is no laughing matter either. The box is enormous and almost impossible to deal with on your own, and the case being well over 30 kg before you install anything could make it very tricky to move on your own, never mind if you install a water-cooling system too. Thankfully, some aspects do alleviate the weight issue and the first is arguably the case's unique feature, which is the removable test bench that acts as a motherboard tray and GPU mount. Detaching any case-bound cooling and cables, you could remove the test bench and with it your GPU, motherboard and PSU to save a significant amount of weight.

The test bench is also a great feature in its own right. If you own an overclocking motherboard and want to spend weekends breaking benchmark records or even build half your PC before you install it into the case, it makes for a useful tool for either of those tasks. It also makes rotating your motherboard blissfully simple, which definitely cannot be said for other cases with that feature that often require half an hour of shifting panels around and staring at instruction manuals.

The included fans don't seem to shove as much air as hoped into our test GPU either, which was a few degrees warmer nearly across the board than the Gamdias Atlas P6 CG for example. However, its design did mean that it was exceptionally quiet and of course, most MEG Maestro 900Rs will likely end up being water-cooled anyway, making this somewhat a moot point.

Ultimately, the MSI MEG Maestro 900R is a fun and surprisingly simple case to work with, which was quite refreshing. It looks fantastic, has room for more radiators than you could possibly need, and has unbeatable views of your hardware. There's no doubt it will turn heads too and will certainly appeal to enthusiasts, even if it's not quite as luxurious, innovative, and free of niggles as you might expect for the price.