20 years in the Republic of Gamers, part four: tempered glass and synchronized light spark a design revolution

One of the most transformative innovations in PC building history is nothing more complicated than a sheet of glass. By and large, classic PC cases were designed from the assumption that internal components should be tucked out of sight. Even when side windows started to appear on chassis designs, they weren't that large or even positioned to provide much of a view of anything. But chassis side windows increasingly caught the imagination of builders everywhere, and the growing popularity of tempered glass in the 2010s took the trend to new heights.  

It’s hard to overstate how much these ultra-wide tempered glass side windows changed the mindset of PC builders. When your entire build is visible every time you sit down at your PC, you're liable to factor in looks as you pick parts. And once you start thinking about the aesthetics of your PC, it’s hard to stop.  

With the advent of widespread, customizable RGB LEDs, the aesthetic revolution of internal PC components was fully underway. Evolving chassis design sparked the fire, RGB LED illumination fanned the flames, and gaming PCs haven’t been the same since.  

This is part four of our multi-part ROG 20th Anniversary Retrospective. Click here to see the full series of articles.

A snapshot of gamer style from the early 2000s 

If your PC building journey started more recently, it’s worth taking a trip back in time to the PC designs that were superseded by this new era of glass and light. The increased performance of CPUs and GPUs back in the 2000s— and their correspondingly increased heat output — meant that PC builders needed new chassis designs built for airflow. They were looking for new visual approaches, too. The shine had worn off the beige rectangles of the 1990s, and builders were looking for something different. 

Props to hothardware.com for keeping their review of the Vento 3600 live for 21 years, along with this photo. May their review stand for another 21! 

They certainly found something different with the ASUS Vento 3600, the first PC case from ASUS. Launched in 2004 and marketed specifically for the growing PC gaming community, the first Vento made an indelible first impression with its aerodynamic contours, cockpit-style cover for the front drive bays, and big jet-engine-style intake vents at the base. It was sold in three color options, none of which can be considered subdued.  

A quick look at the Vento’s side panel shows just how much things have changed with PC cases. Featuring sleek curves, it draws inspiration from classic science fiction to break away from the simple flat planes that defined the cases of the 1990s. Some venting and a small duct directed cooling air toward your CPU, while a swivel latch held the panel in place. 

We’re not here to slag on the Vento 3600’s style. Even today, there’s a community of PC builders with some nostalgia for cases like the Vento: for proof, check out the brisk market for such cases on eBay. But it does represent a design language that treats the internal hardware like the mighty Wizard of Oz, conjuring marvels while hidden behind a curtain. Increasingly, builders sought out cases that would toss that curtain aside. 

Into the great wide open  

The gaming market continued to grow, and the Republic of Gamers was founded in 2006. ROG was never a complete stranger to PC case design, as shown by prebuilt desktops like the 2008 ROG Ares CG6150. But ROG didn’t enter the ring with its own standalone PC case until much later. Before that point, we partnered with other premium brands to create ROG-certified PC cases. By working with brands like In Win, Lian Li, NZXT, Deepcool, and more, we gave ROG loyalists the opportunity to build a PC with consonant design language from the inside out.

The DeepCool Gamer Storm Genome is a great example. This ATX case offered plenty of customization options ranging from a vertical GPU mount to remote-controlled lighting. The clear, cylindrical reservoir at the front of the case was a nice touch, as well. But it’s impossible to ignore the effect of that massive side window. The power supply gets a shroud to hide under, but everything else is visible 24/7.  

The In Win H-Tower took a different approach to showing off your internal hardware, and it has to be seen to be believed. Check out this announcement video from 2016 — don’t miss the grand reveal at 0:53.  

Small-form-factor builders could get in on the fun, too. The Lian Li PC-Q17WX condensed ROG style into an ultra-compact design. Built for mini-ITX motherboards like the ROG Maximus VIII Impact, yet capable of handling beefy cards like the ASUS Turbo GeForce GTX 1080 and even a top-mounted dual-fan radiator, this case catered to gamers who desired excellent performance in a svelte package. That brushed aluminum front panel looks as modern today as it did in 2016, too.  

ROG style evolves to fit the moment  

Early ROG motherboards had already claimed performance leadership in the worlds of gaming and professional overclocking, but our engineers wanted more. With each generation of boards, our team found new design styles that established ROG as the brand of choice for showcase builds that refused to compromise on aesthetics or performance.  

Performance comes first, of course, but looks matter, too. The original Crosshair’s rainbow palette was perhaps an acquired taste, but many gamers fell in love with the 2015 ROG Maximus VIII Hero Alpha at first sight. Featuring armored shells, a stealthy black PCB, and metallic and charcoal hues, this board leans into the distinctive red-on-black colorway that many people associated with PC gaming. 

But this board’s main claim to aesthetic fame actually lies elsewhere. That credit goes to two headers with four pins apiece, and the ASUS Aura RGB lighting effects that builders could control with them.  

Taste the rainbow? Control the rainbow  

By the time that we were designing the ROG Maximus VIII Hero Alpha, RGB lighting had taken over. The PC building community thrives on customization, and the moment that it became convenient to fully customize the glow of our rigs, most of us jumped at the opportunity. ROG established itself at the forefront of the RGB revolution that swept across the PC industry through products like the Maximus VIII Hero Alpha, which took the trend to the next level with headers for off-the-shelf LED strips, plus the ability to control them with the Aura software for the onboard lighting. 

As much fun as builders were having with RGB lighting, the early years were a bit of a wild west as the PC-building community figured out how to standardize the experience. As readers of xkcd should expect, it wasn’t long before the industry was flooded with competing lighting standards. Thanks to proprietary ecosystems, closed gardens, and disagreements between motherboard manufacturers about the basic headers, it was easy to end up with mismatched lighting effects across your setup. And if you worked a bit too hard at connecting 5V ARGB LEDs into 12V RGB headers, you had fried LEDs on your hands, too. 

It was the “rainbow puke” problem of early motherboard design — but glowing brightly across your entire desktop instead of tucked out of sight in your chassis. 

We took a big step toward solving this problem in 2016 through Aura Sync. This updated lighting system enabled synchronizing colors and effects across multiple components. Our software let you control each component individually or sync the ones you want with just a few clicks.  

Aura Sync quickly spread to other ROG gear, including scores of graphics cards and some of our first gaming peripherals, like the Claymore keyboard and Magnus microphone. We also started working with industry partners to bring their products into the fold. Thanks to our cooperation with In Win, NZXT, Phanteks, BitFenix, DeepCool, CableMod, Akasa, EKWB, Cooler Master, Geil, G.Skill, and Zadak, builders could get Aura Sync-compatible cases, light strips, fans, water blocks, memory modules, and SSDs. With the introduction of the ROG Swift PG27VQ, our first gaming monitor with Aura Sync support, and the Strix Fusion, which extended lighting to headsets, ROG had solidified our lighting solution as the only one capable of covering pretty much every component in your PC. 

These days, the bumps in the road to a PC with harmonized lighting have mostly all been smoothed out. With modern gear and Windows Dynamic Lighting, you can control basically all your lighting effects on all your devices, regardless of manufacturer, all without installing third-party apps. Our web-based tool Gear Link gives more robust customization options for the lighting and functionality of recent ASUS and ROG hardware. If you’re looking for advanced lighting effects beyond those provided by Windows, Armoury Crate provides the easy, rich Aura Sync lighting options that you’re looking for, and it offers tools for updating, monitoring, and customizing your gear, too. 

Weapons for waging a war on wires  

Here’s a tough truth about cleaning up the aesthetics of a PC build. The further you go in tidying up and coordinating the look of your build, the more the remaining messy pieces stand out. After assembling gaming rigs with coordinating PC components and synchronized lighting effects, many builders found themselves staring at the tangle of wires and cables in their PC, wondering how they might tidy them up. 

There’s a segment of the PC building community that has always prided itself on the clean, satisfying lines of excellent cable management, but the concern for cable management really went mainstream following the ascendancy of tempered glass in PC chassis design. Once niche products like aftermarket cables and cable combs became standard fare. Chassis manufacturers competed over the size and conveniences of their cable management compartments. Gamers sought to take control of their desktop space, too, through high-performance wireless gaming peripherals and monitors with built-in cable management. 

Yet while most of the wires in your PC could be straightened and coaxed into some measure of respectability, they remained stubbornly in view — until 2024. That year, we launched our BTF ecosystem. 

For as much as motherboards had changed over the decades prior, one thing had stayed the same: everything plugged in and connected to one side of the board. For our BTF motherboards we reversed this decades-old paradigm. Components attached to the front; cables plugged into the back. 

The approach neatly resolves 95% of your cable management concerns by simply keeping the cables out sight. Many folks find that it helps with the build process, too. Since you’re working from the back side of the motherboard tray, you’re less likely to encounter obstructions and obstacles, and you won’t have to reach as far into the depths of your chassis to plug things in.  

Of course, not every cable in your PC connects directly to the motherboard. For builders working to tidy up the cables in their PC, the cable that provides power for their graphics card can cause headaches. This wire hangs off the side of the card, usually front-and-center for anyone looking through the side panel at the completed build. To address this problem, we designed BTF 2.0 motherboards with a 12V-2X6 connector hidden on the underside of the board, and BTF graphics cards capable of drawing their power through the motherboard through a graphics card high-power gold finger. 

The first BTF graphics cards were only compatible with BTF motherboards due to the presence of this gold finger, but our latest designs offer you much more flexibility. With the ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 5090, ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 32GB GDDR7 BTF Edition, and TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 5070 Ti 16GB GDDR7 BTF White Edition graphics cards, the specialized gold fingers are located on a cutout on the PCB. To install the card in a BTF motherboard, you pop on the detachable GC-HPWR adapter so that the card can draw power through the motherboard. This adapter supports up to 1000W of power transfer, giving it ample headroom even when it’s supplying the most powerful graphics cards available today. For compatibility with standard motherboards, this adapter is removable. Simply detach the adapter and it won’t interfere with the board. 

Another set of cables that can be tough to manage are the ones for your AIO CPU liquid cooler. There’s only so much you can do with a cable that starts on the side of an AIO’s pump housing and ends on a nearby header, and if you’ve opted for an AIO cooler with ARGB lighting or a built-in display, you’ll need to figure out a non-messy route for a second cable, as well. At CES 2026, we announced a new approach that lets you put the zip ties back on the shelf. With our new ROG Strix LC IV series and our latest AM5 motherboards, we’re debuting AIO Q-Connector technology. When you pair one of these AIO CPU liquid coolers with a compatible motherboard, you won’t need to connect a single cable to the pump, simplifying installation and cleaning up your build.  

Show-stopping ROG PC cases bring it all together  

In 2019, we made our first foray into the standalone PC case market with the original ROG Strix Helios. Integrating multiple tempered glass panels, plentiful RGB LED illumination with integrated lighting control, and innovative strategies for helping you achieve a clean build, the Helios pulled together all the separate threads of modern PC chassis design. 

Anticipating that the cooling needs of PC gaming hardware would only increase in the years to come, we opted to make the Helios roomier than many of its initial competitors. Its top panel accommodates 360mm liquid cooling radiators, while its front panel allows for whopping 420mm radiators. An integrated hub built into the case powers up to six case fans.  

The Helios remains a compelling option for gamers who shop for graphics cards in the big and tall department, too. Some reviewers felt that the chassis was larger than necessary back in 2019, but that extra depth ended up being a godsend for builders upgrading to the latest graphics cards on the market. The Helios offers support for graphics cards up to 450mm in length, making it a capable dance partner for even the largest ASUS graphics card available today. 

With great gaming power comes great responsibility for cooling. If you're building a PC with some of the most powerful components on the market, cooling can’t be an afterthought. In 2023, we launched the ROG Hyperion, a large-and-in-charge PC gaming case built first and foremost for fantastic airflow. Huge channels in the front allow copious quantities of air to pass through alongside a grille along the top. Coupled with support for up to two 420mm radiators, you can rest assured your components will stay frosty and perform their best, whether you’re using your own heatsinks, all-in-one liquid cooling, or a fully custom loop designed from the ground up. 

With its big intake vents, crossbar structure, and sturdy carrying handles lifted above the top plane of the chassis, there’s something about the Hyperion that harkens back to the design of gaming cases back when ROG began. At the same time, it’s a very modern case with its ample room for today’s components, optional support for BTF hardware, and plentiful opportunities to make a showcase rig with its huge tempered glass side panel and dazzling RGB LED lighting effects. In many respects, it’s a chassis that straddles different design eras in one unmistakable design. 

In 2025, we refreshed the design of the first Helios with an eye toward beefing up its cooling solution even further. We replaced the tempered glass on the front of the original with an aluminum panel perforated with a grille of diamond-pattern slits that lets a wide stream of cooling air come in. A noise reduction 3D-structured filter behind the panel lets you enjoy the front fans’ cooling power while minimizing their sound output.  

Moving gaming PC design forward in 2026 

In 2026, we’re breaking boundaries yet again with the ROG Cronox gaming case and ROG Eurux GR120 ARGB case fans. The Cronox and Eurux are standout options for gamers who love the pristine look of tempered glass, the customizable glow of RGB LED illumination, and a clean aesthetic that hides cables wherever possible. 

More than any other ROG chassis that came before it, the Cronox leans into the defining trends of modern PC chassis design — and elevates them to new heights. Like the original Helios, it offers tempered glass on the front and side, but now it’s one sweeping sheet of glass with a tight curve at the corner. Its bottom-to-top airflow design ensures there’s nothing at the front to inhibit your view of your build.  

The Cronox and Eurux create new possibilities for your custom lightshow, too. Supporting up to fourteen total 120mm fans, including room for four 120mm fans on the bottom, side, and top, you’ll be well-equipped for building an exceptional airflow pathway and a lighting array that’ll draw all eyes. Its integrated 9.2-inch LCD screen that supports exclusive ROG animations, system monitoring information, and custom graphics might be the star of the show. Opt for a motherboard and AIO CPU liquid cooler with our new ASUS AIO Q-Connector design, and you’ll have outstanding CPU cooling without having to fuss with straightening highly visible cables. 

To support your quest for tidy build, the ROG Cronox supports our BTF motherboard ecosystem. A wide cable management chamber with all the amenities keeps everything organized behind the scenes. The wires for your fans don’t have to be a hassle, either, as the new ROG Eurux case fans feature our new patented daisy-chain connectors that simplify installation with their sturdy latching mechanism while cutting down on the number of wires you need to keep everything powered and glowing. And with three individually addressable lighting zones per fan at our disposal, we were able to design some truly mesmerizing visual effects for these spinners.   

What a long, strange trip it’s been  

Beige boxes defined PC chassis design in the 1980s and 1990s. Bold colors, retooled shapes, and experiments with side windows broke new ground in the 2000s. In the years that followed, tempered glass, customizable lighting, and clean cable management took off, empowering gamers design highly personalized PCs that showcase their hardware choices, their building skill, and their unique aesthetic from the inside out.  

Where will gaming PC design go next? We have our suspicions, but we’re also hedging our bets by working to give you more options than ever before. Maybe the distinctive look of natural wood elements has caught your eye. Perhaps everything old will indeed become new again as builders rediscover beige. You could take a step back from ARGB lighting, or maybe set aside the tempered glass in favor of breathable mesh.  

Whatever direction you take with your next PC, ROG hardware will provide the performance you need in designs built for wide-ranging customization and personalization. For alternate takes, don’t miss the options provided by our other ASUS product families: ProArt, TUF Gaming, and Prime.