Montech Air 903 MAX Mid-Tower Case Review

TweakTown's Rating: 98%

The Bottom Line

Montech has done it again with the Air 903 MAX. The Air 903 Air has great ventilation, and four included PWM aRGB fans. With an amazingly low price of $75, the Air 903 MAX will be hard to beat.

Pros

• + Great airflow
• + Four included 140mm fans, with three being of the aRGB variety
• + Killer pricing of $75 for the aRGB model

Cons

• - The fan/aRGB controller placement makes the cabling a little messy

Should you buy it?

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Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

Montech, a value-oriented PC case and PSU manufacturer sent over their new Air 903 MAX mid-tower ATX case that we saw while we were at Computex 2023 in Taipei, Taiwan. The Air 903 MAX is focused on an airflow design while being priced at an amazing low $74.99 for the black aRGB model, which we have here; however, the white Air 903 MAX is priced at only $5 more. Both aRGB models include three 140mm aRGB fans and a color case-matched rear 140mm fan.

Non-aRGB base models are priced at $65 for the black model, while the white model is only $4 more for a total of $69; both non-aRGB models only include two color-matched front 140mm fans and a rear 140mm case fan. Why don't we put some hardware in the Montech Air 903 MAX and look at some temperatures to fully understand what is happening under the hood?

Montech Air 903 MAX

	Today	Yesterday	7 days ago	30 days ago
	$75.00	$75.00	$75.00	$75.00	Buy
	$75.00	$75.00	$75.00	$75.00	Buy
* Prices last scanned on 8/28/2024 at 10:39 pm CDT - prices may not be accurate, click links above for the latest price. We may earn an affiliate commission.

Packaging

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The fairly standard packaging, the Air 903 MAX, comes packaged in brown cardboard with a picture of the case on the outside, classic.

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The back of the packaging shows a summary of the Air 903 MAX and a few features in several languages.

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A blown-out imagery of the Air 903 MAX showing what is included.

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The full specifications of the Air 903 MAX are on the side of the packaging.

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The Air 903 MAX packaging is fairly standard, with two white foam pieces and a clear plastic bag.

Outside the Montech Air 903 MAX ATX Case

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Taking the Air 903 MAX out of all the packaging shows the mid-tower stance of this airflow-oriented ATX PC case, with a triangle-style ventilation pattern on the front intake and the full mesh front air intake.

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The front of the Air 903 MAX shows the small yet very well-ventilated front intake, with the three visible aRGB 140mm fans to pull air in.

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The rear of the Montech Air 903 MAX has a hexagonal ventilation pattern on the rear fan that matches the PCIe slots, along with space right above the PCIe slots. There's support for a 120mm or 140mm fan for the rear fan mount. The rear PSU mount is non removable, with no vertical GPU mounts.

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The top section of the Montech Air 903 MAX has a full-length dust filter, not that it needs one, being primarily an exhaust; it's still nice to be included, though. The top I/O consists of a large square power button, two USB 3.0 Type-A ports, a single USB 3.2 Type-C port, and separated 3.5mm microphone and headphone jacks. Two small circular buttons, Reset and an LED, are also on the end.

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The bottom of the Air 903 MAX has a slide-out dust filter for the PSU, which you do see at least done well at this price point. Also, four decent-sized rubber-dampened feet raise the Air 903 MAX about another 2.5cm from the surface it's sitting on.

Inside the Montech Air 903 MAX ATX Case

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Taking the tempered glass side panel off reveals the insides of the Air 903 MAX, again with tons of ventilation, which is the common theme. In the Air 903 MAX, water coolers should be able to be happy with support for either 280mm and or 360mm radiators. Radiator clearance is about 5cm or 50mm for both the front and top mounts.

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The three included aRGB 140mm fans that Montech has formed with the Air 903 MAX that look good quality with six fan blades connected to an external ring.

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Once the rear panel is removed, expose the bones of the operation. I would have liked to see the fan/aRGB controller moved to the center of the left SSD/HDD tray, which would have presented a cleaner approach to cable management. The Air 903 MAX has support for up to two 2.5" SSD/HDDs on the motherboard tray, as well as two more on the tray to the left of the motherboard. Located in the basement, it can accommodate another 2.5" SSD/HDDs or dual 3.5" HDDs in the removable HDD cage. PSU clearance in the Air 903 MAX is not an issue with 240mm worth of clearance.

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Montech has even included a fan/aRGB controller that can accommodate up to six PWM fans with control from the front I/O or the 5V aRGB header on the motherboard.

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As for accessories, Montech has included various screws, standoffs, and a few zip ties. A product manual is also provided.

Test System, Installation, and Finished Product

• Motherboard: B650 AORUS Elite AX (AMD B650) - Buy from Amazon
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X - Buy from Amazon
• Cooler: Deepcool AK620 Digital - Buy from Amazon
• Memory: Patriot Viper Venom 32GB DDR5 5600 RGB - Buy from Amazon
• Graphics Card: NVIDIA RTX 3090 Founders Edition - Buy from Amazon
• Storage: Corsair MP600 PRO XT Gen4 PCIe x4 NVMe M.2 SSD - Buy from Amazon
• Case: Montech Air 903 MAX - Buy from Amazon
• Software: AIDA64 Engineer 6.32.5600, and CPU-z 1.94.0 x64
• Power Supply: MSI MAG AL850L ATX 3.0 PSU - Buy from Amazon
• OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro 64-bit Build 22621 - Buy from Amazon
• Software: AIDA64 Engineer 6.8.6300, and CPU-z 2.03.0 x64

Final Thoughts

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Building a system inside the Montech Air 903 MAX was a fast and easy experience; Montech has really paid attention to what the market wants or needs. The result is a great-looking ATX case that has excellent airflow, mostly due to the sheer brunt force of including four 140mm fans, three of which are installed in the front mesh air intake.

The usual set of test computer hardware consists of an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X, with a Deepcool AK620 heatsink, all on a B650 AORUS Elite AX motherboard complete with 32GB of Patriot Viper DDR5-5600. In the graphical department is the tried and true NVIDIA RTX 3090 FE, while Corsair's MP600 Pro XT 2TB NVME M.2 SSD was installed in the top M.2 slot on the motherboard for storage. Providing power for the system was MSI's MAG A850GL ATX 3.0 PSU; a review will be up soon.

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Moving on to the cable management of the Air 903 MAX, the only complaint is the included fan/aRGB controller, which is slightly in the way and tends to have disorganized cabling. A few more rubber cable grommets would have hidden the cables more, but cable management was pretty solid otherwise.

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Loading up the test system, the Montech Air 903 MAX easily handles the test hardware. The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X, a 16-core 32-threaded CPU with a TDP of 170 watts, was run at 1.128vcore, which ran fully stable at its default clocks. Temperatures for the Ryzen 9 7950X at idle sat at 36C, while only rose to an average of 66.7C at full load while drawing on average 112 watts.

The GPU, the NVIDIA RTX 3090 FE, was sitting comfortably at 24C on idle and only got up to an average temperature of 50.2C at full load while drawing an average of 209.2 watts. All testing was completed using Aida64 Engineer's System Stability Test version 6.92.6600 for 24 hours. Other monitoring software used was HWiNFO64 v7.63-5205, TechPowerUp GPU-Z 2.55.0, and CPU-Z 2.07.0.x64.

In conclusion, Montech has made an outstanding entry in the value section of the PC case market, but then again, Montech is known for its value. At $75, one has to wonder where the profit margin is for Montech, but they keep producing great ATX cases for the sub-$ $100 market. So, if anyone you know is looking for a great ATX case that includes four 140mm fans and doesn't break the bank, they must check out the Air 903 MAX from Montech.