Argon NEO Raspberry Pi 4 Case | All Aluminum

as advertised; really easy to assemble and use (in as much as you can "use" an enclosure).Note that this one does not come with a fan, but you probably don't need one (I don't); there's one available for this case that looks like a good design, if you want one.

Assembly:It's easy to assemble. Although, I received only one thermal pad instead of two so I had to cut the one I got in half. It wasn't the most accurate cut so one piece was bigger than the other and slightly too big for the IHC on the board. I've read from reviews that this case used to come with two separate thermal pads but for some reason it was changed to one larger pad. While I don't have it on hand. I vaguely recall that the manual also states that the case is supposed to have two thermal pads and doesn't mention cutting one thermal pad into two.Case overview:The case itself looks great. I really like the look of it. The build quality seems really good. I think the sliding lid feature is a great idea but could be better executed (see below). Having access to the gpio pins and camera port is great. The case even has a holder for the pi camera. I haven't tested it as I don't own a pi camera but it looks pretty good and should hold the camera well. There's a translucent piece of black plastic where the pi status LEDs are located which I thought was a great addition. It isn't too translucent. It's acts a bit like a diffuser so it filters the piercing brightness of LEDs but the light from the LED is still very bright. I often forget to turn off the pi and am reminded from across the room by the red LED.Most of the ports are flush against the edge of the case so most cable shrouds shouldn't be an issue. At least, I haven't had an issue with any of my cables.Thermals:I haven't tested the thermal performance but the case gets quite warm. I would assume that it's helping to cool the board a bit but I wasn't expecting much as it's passive cooling. If you're looking for cooling to support heavy loads or overclocking, maybe look at cases with active cooling like fans. For example, the argon one.Connectivity:I saw some people having issues with the metal enclosure causing WiFi issues. I haven't noticed any changes in download speed.Issues:I only have some issues with the case. The first is when closing the sliding lid. You have to make sure the lid is flush with the case before sliding towards the magnets. I often forget to do this so the magnets will pull the lid to the locked position and the lid will get stuck on the rim of the case. This leaves a small gap (shown in pictures). The annoying part is that I can't push the lid down to close the gap. I have to slide the lid out, push down and then slide the lid to locked position. I think if the case and lid had a rail system in which the lid had to slide through then it would be better. Also this would make me feel more comfortable about traveling with the case. While the magnets are very strong, I do not trust them to keep the lid on if I were to just put the case in my bag. I have resorted to putting the case into the box that the case came in when traveling with the pi. That way I know the lid won't come off and the gpio pins are safe.I think the tooling and the tolerance for the case could be better. The gap between the lid and the case when closed varies a lot around the case. In some places it's completely flush and in others it's a 0.5-1mm gap. Perhaps, this is intentional to make closing the lid easier.Conclusion:I paid £15.99 for the argon neo which I think is a reasonable price. I wouldn't pay more for it mainly because of the issues I listed above.It looks great and is a unique design. It's in a weird spot for recommending. While the size and shape makes the case portable, the sliding lid makes it awkward to travel with. I shouldn't need to put the case back into the cardboard box it came with. Therefore, I'm not sure I could recommend it for travelling. I could recommend it if you're going to keep your pi in one place and it won't be moved much. However, I think it depends how you use the pi. If you're running heavy loads or overclocking then maybe a case with active cooling like a fan would be better. If you're running light loads without overclocking and want easy access to the gpio then sure this case works. There are probably other cases that do the same thing for cheaper and without a sliding lid though. Therefore, this case is tough to recommend.

Its a very well built case and nicely finished, well worth the money. However even when idle, the whole case will be quite warm to the touch; running a systemd service to display some graphics on a tiny pHAT immediately send the 4B into thermal throttling hell. Probably I was a bit too optimistic on how much of a heat sink the case will be; for burst workloads it probably will fair a bit better.In any case I still like it, I just put it on a different Pi for audio playback and its looks fantastic even in the living room.

I don't know what changed or when, but the RJ45 socket on my PI4 4GB is longer than the USB sockets and so the case does not fit.Everything else lines up, but it's clearly designed to fit a different version of PI4 than I have.Return on its way.

Item has arrived with no screws. Box was clearly opened before.