Construction Quality
The Yuel Beast Motif Monument, being built from steel plates, is well built. We did find one of the four rear plate standoffs to be bent, and too much so that it could not be easily bent back into place or have the screw installed. As solid as the chassis itself is, this isn’t a problem due to the standoffs themselves being extremely strong and three standoffs are plenty to keep the rear plate firmly attached.
The white finish is also very nice, though also jarring if there is any inconsistency. We did have one small chip in the white paint on the review sample. Given that the Motif Monument is meant to be seen this is a bit disappointing.
Packaging
Yuel Beast packages the Motif Monument in a nondescript cardboard box with a few pieces of sturdy foam to keep the parts stable.
Cooling Potential
As an open chassis, the Motif Monument has unrestricted airflow to the CPU, GPU, and other heat-generating parts like the motherboard VRM and memory. The only real restriction is that a ‘front to back’ orientation for tower HSFs may not be optimal as the side facing the motherboard rear I/O cluster extends to expansion card height. Most cases usually have a fan placed in this location or at least vents and mounting holes for a fan. For this reason, we chose to mount the be quiet! Shadow Rock 3 tower cooler in a bottom to top orientation.
Otherwise, given its stature, CPU cooling is limited to traditional HSF setups, but only truly restricted in terms of user preferences and other component choices. Tall HSF towers and triple-fan towers are absolutely game and even heavier coolers are unlikely to significantly shift the center of mass. For GPU cooling, while there is no hard length restriction, GPUs exceeding 2.5 slots thick will likely find the side that is situated between the PSU and the motherboard sections to restrict airflow.
Installation Notes
Aside from the challenges posed by component choice, such as needing to install memory before a CPU cooler that overhangs the memory slots, Yuel Beast’s Motif Monument really only has one build order requirement, which is to install the power button to the backplate before affixing the backplate to the main chassis.
Otherwise, the Motif Monument functions largely as a vertical test bench with a small footprint, with all components supported physically but otherwise unobstructed.
Recommended Customizations
Yuel Beast recommends that a fully-modular PSU be used, and even custom length cables for the tidiest builds. For this review, the Silverstone SX1000 stock cables were used which resulted in a few awkward power lead runs, with the 24-pin motherboard power lead sticking out and the 8-pin lead to the GPU being within a millimeter of being too short to run toward the back of the chassis.
