Gadgetory

we finally got the fan taxi Evolv extra view and while it is not the perfect case no case really is it's pretty interesting fan tax does a lot of different things with this one they have for example a top mounted ITX bracket they can buy separately that is then powered in a split system set up with a single power supply so fan tax gets credit for doing something different and unique fan tanks also does some things that we've seen in the past and didn't necessarily like and we'll walk through all that through this system as well some examples are shown here to be discussed momentarily the case is about $200 stand alone it's about four hundred sixty-five if you buy with the power supply and with the sheet of metal that adapts the mini ITX system to the top of the case before that this video is brought to you by the be quiet dark rock 4 and dark rock pro 4 CPU coolers these high-end coolers to focus on a smarter approach to air cooling by adding a mini fin stack on top of the direct contact cold plate adding small bumps to the fins for increased surface area and by using silent wanes 135 millimeter fans custom-built for high performance cooling without too much noise the pro is a dual Tower cooler rated for 250 watt TDP while the dark rock 4 is built for 200 watt CDP's learn more at the link of the description below so this is on loan from Chris one of our viewers and thank you Chris - for sending this we really appreciate it because we didn't get one and they're kind of hard to get it's a really popular case apparently or the quantities low or a bit of both so fan tax absolutely has driven interest with this case and there's not a ton of availability out there - just to just pick one up this one was a combo unit so this was four hundred and sixty-five dollars for the case and the combo 80 + platinum power supply it's a sea Sonic foundation power supply that splits so you can power a bottom system a top system they just have a power button for both and if you wanted a streaming system built inside of the case with a main system for gaming and then one captures the other you can do that it's a bit convoluted we talked about that through Patrick's build notes later but it's absolutely doable and that's pretty interesting so we tested that thermally as well because it is a very unique use case and when she deserves notice the overall build quality the layout the design of case it will leave a lot of the aesthetics to your own personal take but from a design standpoint thermals are actually not that bad despite the front panel looking like they're pretty bad there's enough of a gap here and the bottlenecks are actually elsewhere not the front panel the bottleneck is primarily in the dust filter or the fans depend on how you look at it either you look at it as the dust filter is too restrictive and impeding intake or the fans don't have enough static pressure to pull through the filter rather than maybe push for example through a filter and so that's a potential design challenge as well that pantech spaces but we'll talk about the thermals momentarily their overall far better than we expected which is saying a lot honestly the evolve X looking at it we thought it would be very bad thermally but it did okay and we'll talk about that later even for the mini ITX dual system thermals it was not too bad for design elements we don't like talked about some we do like let's talk about so we don't like fantex is still going with the weird halo 1 plasma gun plasticky design they have where it's trying to look futuristic in ways that it really doesn't look futuristic and they've done this before for example this sliding plate on top of the power splash shroud it's why it doesn't look good it's like it's one of the only things that's plastic and it has no real functional purpose they're more sliding plates in here and the drive cages the case doesn't include two and a half inch drive sleds where it really should even though they support them you have to buy them separately and this is something that fantex likes to do where they saw stuff that we think are basically necessities as separate items and you can't say that it's saving you money by not including it because it's $200 or 465 with the combo for the Paris play so anyway this should be included two sleds here but they're not included instead you work with these panels and these are interesting well give them credit for this interesting kill management design it's very easy to work with easy to work with then some of cooler masters but when you mount the SSDs in this drive area it's very easy to pinch the SSD connectors something that we've seen in other cases before and one which is potentially bad for your SST if it rips the connector out we actually had that happen on an old Rosewell case that had a similar design approach so interesting door but not well executed really and and that's kind of problematic for that specific use case of having I don't know a drive in your system so we really do think it should include some here and not be a another DLC approach but the case does do a lot of very interesting things as well as discussed and one of them is apparently being kind of difficult to reclose that door there we go another quick interesting thing what we'll talk about and Paget's build notes is the three slot vertical GPU mount so it allows you to space the video card a bit further away from the panel then typically and that is something that should be good as you'll see in the thermal section you have a two and a half for a 2.75 slot card probably still don't use it though and then also the if you wanted to have a top system with a riser you can route it to this slot and run your video out there or a capture card there unfortunately at $465 they're not including the riser cable you have to buy that separately as well so it might be easier to just use an IEP system of the top which is what we did for our testing but let's go through Paget's notes and then the thermal testing data getting into the case is easy enough the side panels hinge outwards from the front but they clip shut behind the front panel for thamma screws can be put through the panels to hold them more securely but we'd recommend leaving them out unless the system is being moved otherwise the front panel must be first removed in order to take the screws out the hinges work well the doors swing a full 180 degrees and lifting the doors off of their pins is easy we would like to see more hinges like the view 71 s where the pins are of unequal height so that they can be lined up and inserted one at a time like the C 700 M the Evolve X has a very easily removable front panel where the spring-loaded pins connecting the built-in LED strips so this is a good move for cable management the default LED patterns are smooth and unab noxious is enough to be usable but they also accept a D RGB control or three pin five volt the cables are tucked away and clutter isn't too bad in fact the factory kale management was a little overzealous as the power button cable had been stretched too tight and unplugs when we received the case kale management in general is good thanks to the built-in velcro straps and hinged metal cable covers there are also sliding plastic shields that can cover unoccupied cable cutouts but these aren't especially useful and are more just kind of extra plastic that sounds nice and marketing doesn't really do a whole lot fantex is big on extras and features some more useful than others one pleasant surprise was the plastic box with various screws already sorted out in it there's also an airflow cover quote-unquote anyway that we didn't get a chance to test but which is designed to block air from recirculating through unoccupied fan mounts something we experimented with in the BitFenix enzo there's actually definitely validity to this idea and so it might be worth using if you do end up with a sort of circular air path the vertical GPU mount isn't anything new here but it's three slots wide on the Evolve X rather than the usual two that means either GPUs that take up more than two slots can be mounted vertically bad idea or GPUs that take up two or fewer slots can be mounted vertically with actually decent clearance from the side panel pretty good idea so this is something that you should be using if you want to go vertical GPU I'll show you why in the thermal section the top radiator and fan mount is removable which is always a nice and good feature but we'd like to see a similar removable mount in the front of the case as well there is only one major fit and finished problem the case fans have a raised rim at the end of each blade and one was wedged tightly into the front fan mount when it first arrived fixing it required slightly loosening the fan screws or else it was impossible for the fans rotate part of the problem is that the front fan mount is made of thin flexible pieces of metal that can buckle inwards towards the fans the fans are plugged into a hub by default the hub can either run the fans at full speed or accept PWM control but there are no other buttons or sliders to control speed eight a report at the top fan speed has roughly 1,200 rpm regardless of whether they were attached to the hub or directly to the motherboard the ITX bracket was easier to work with than most the small form-factor cases we've reviewed it's just a metal frame with a power button that screws into the motherboard this in turn can be inserted into the upper rear of the main case and attached to the top fan or radiator mount unfortunately the mini ITX frame clamps the radiator mount to the chassis it'd be more convenient if it were possible to just screw the ITX system on like a radiator and then pop it in or out of the case so this is overall an OK implementation but one which definitely has avenues for improvement it's not bad it's just it could be more convenient and it wouldn't be that difficult to make it more convenient moving on to thermals and noise and as always check the link in the description below for the article on this with more information on how we tested we did to torture passes rather than the normal one just to verify our baseline results because this is a more complicated case than normally for simplicity's sake we're listing the first run they were within margin of area of each other and validated we also tested with a vertical GPU and the two slots closest to the motherboard we did another test without the front panel we did one without the front panel or the filter and we also did some dual system testing by running fire strike on the main system and streaming it with the secondary one it isn't directly comparable to other cases but it is comparable to the regular fire strike results for this case we'll talk about the dual system thermals towards the end as usual we're starting with a CPU torture testing we'll start with just the fan text results and then move on to comparative data CPU temperature average 51.2 degrees celsius delta t / ambiens and torture testing for baseline taking the front panel off had no significant impact on the delta and landed us at 50 1.9 degrees over ambient that's within margin of error of the baseline and so is functionally the same for its relatively low pressure fans fantex is getting sufficient air flow around the front panel this would likely become more of an issue with higher pressure fans and as you'll see in a second the filter can help validate some of this despite appearances of a choked front fan Tex has done a good job of space in the front panel away from the intake fans enough and leaving wide gaps for airflow removing the filter as well as the front panel did lower CPU temperature down to 45 point three degrees though revealing the real bottleneck the dust filter heavily impedes air flow which is a mixture of stock fans with low static pressure performance and the filter itself mounting the GPU vertically raised the CPU temperature slightly up to fifty two point seven degrees thousand T over ambient but that could be a good sign since we sometimes see CPU temperatures drop when the GPU is being suffocated in a vertical mount we'll show the other half of this result in a moment comparatively fifty one point two degrees over ambient puts the Evolve X and the CPU temperature range of the stock 1/2 X or the C 700 mm with its front cover removed that's respectable company to be in and is a bit better than the center of the pack the straight front to back airflow pattern between the upper intake fan and the rear exhaust fan provides benefits for our CPU cooler which sits exactly between them other nearby cases that did well include the H 500 non-p mesh case at $100 operating at forty nine point nine degrees we previously praised this one as a good mix of value and performance for clarity that's the H 500 space mesh not the H 500 P mesh nor the H 500 M and definitely not the NZXT age 500 hopefully the editors figure out which one we're talking about eight 700 is similarly priced or cheaper if you go for the H 709 I and ends up a couple degrees warmer than the Evolve X age 500 P mesh get that right the aged 500 P space mesh operates at an advantage 48 degrees over ambient and is also similarly priced GPO Torture temperatures are next for the evolve X stock GPO temperature is 53 degrees Celsius Delta Z over ambient on average it was more responsive than the CPU through moving the front panel and dropped down to 49 point eight degrees over ambient and drops further with the filter removed down to 48 point four degrees delta T over ambient the vertical GPU test was also a bit cooler than the baseline test which is truly impressive given how many times we've seen GPUs break 60 degrees Celsius DT when mounted vertically often entering throttle territory pretty hard fan tax has provided enough clearance with the side panel and the CB cooler that for once it may not be a terrible idea to use vertical mounting with an air-cooled card as long as it's in the slots closest to the motherboard if you were to mount this in the slots closer to the panel or to use a 2.7 slot r-tx it would definitely be a problem just like normally so be careful with that DP tortured temperatures for the Evolve x comparatively are up next the corsair 270 r and thermaltake corp III are comparable in terms of GPU cooling the p3 is open but has no fans and the 270 are only comes with two 120 millimeter fans but they're both average performers as for cases priced similarly to the non combo evolve X about 200 bucks the H 500 P mesh operates a GPU temperature of fifty two point two degrees over ambient and the H 700 I ends up at around fifty two point five degrees these are similar in performance to the evolve axes 53° stock temperature results there's a steady supply of air along the bottom of the case from the lower intake but it's not quite as direct as with the CPU 3dmark GPU temperature is fifty five point six degrees Celsius over ambient on average within a company in CPU DT of twenty five point seven degrees Celsius that's the same as the silverstone pmo to an average to below average case that suffers heavily in comparison to the PM oh one the Evolve x ends up around where the h 500m performs with the glass installed and that's a similarly priced case or around the C seven hundred P also sort of similarly priced age five hundred mesh runs at fifty one point five degrees and is toward the top end of the charge for something expensive that is also cooler both the CPU and GPU salts are important to note this time since they're the baseline temperatures for our dual system test coming up here's the test everyone's been waiting for a dual system build in the same box testing thermals in a real-world use case this isn't just a torture test we actually used it like we think you probably would as a reminder we used an i-5 8400 as a stream capture CPU with OBS set to 12 megabits per second and faster realistically we'd recommend an r5 1600 or 2600 for most builds kind of like this but that requires some sort of display out as well which is both more complicated and increases the thermal potential issues the i-5 8400 is still perfectly capable for an encoding system for a live stream and also has an eye GP so you don't need an addition video card in there to handle the video out or other simple tasks that really don't deserve an a whole component taking up more space in the bottom of the case anyway this isn't a build guide it's just a CPU to generate some heat for our lower system we used a fire strike extreme on loop and then captured its output with the top system the stream test with two systems installed resulted in a lower GP temperature than the ATX only test the new results is fifty two point six degrees over ambient for the system running fire strike with capture actually slightly lower than the stock fifty five point six degree fire strike test originally there's a good reason for this with a new gap in the rear of the case and an additional CPU cooler exhausting some air out of it more GPU exhaust with drawn upwards this helps reduce radiative heat traffic near the backside of the GPU which causes our two degrees Delta this is reflected in the thirty-three point three degrees CPU temperature of the fire strike system which is much higher than the original CPU temperature of twenty-five point seven degrees so this is strictly an airflow path and pressure system that's changing the results you're seeing here all that extra heat from the top CPU has to go somewhere it's not going to be just cooler everywhere and the extra heat in this instance is getting pulled through the primary CPU socket area the mini ITX system was responsible only for streaming the output from the ATX system using an external capture card an internal capture card or secondary GPU for video out would increase temperature accordingly of course from both using more space and generating more heat in terms of watts used within the system recorded thermal data for both systems but the hard numbers here are of limited use without anything to compare them to the main takeaway is that it's not as much of a thermal hotbox as we might have expected which is partly thanks to modern CPUs drawing lower power like the i-5 8400 we used a low-profile cooler on our Mini ITX streaming system because the CPU cooler of the main system was in the way and that's likely the approach most users will take that ended up at around 53 degrees over a mins which is definitely getting warm it worked fine using the smaller system exclusively for streaming but any additional load or overclock you know would push the limits of such a small cooler regardless of how good or bad the results are it's hard not to think about how much better the thermal would get just by taking the secondary system out of the case and running it on the desk beside it but that would require space to permit this build and that's a big point here but it would be probably cheaper almost certainly than spending four hundred sixty-five dollars on a case and power supply combo because you're paying a lot for that ad plus Platinum power supply rendering on the CPU brought the Evolve axis CPU temperature to thirty seven point nine degrees over ambience between the land cool one and the 500 D and still almost exactly in the middle of the chart rendering on the GPU brought GPU DT to twenty six point four that's about the same in terms of chart positioning but between two all glass cases this time the view 71 and alpha 554 the standard a single system test bench for noise levels we measured the noise level to be 41 point 9 DBA at max fan speed which is loud relative to the other cases on this chart although the glass panels have rubber seals along the edges there's not much obstructing noise from coming from the front case fans the case fans don't need to run it maximum rpm all the time but keep in mind that they will unless the fan hub is connected to a motherboard header and you set a decent fan profile it doesn't choke the air too much that's the case that's the fan text evolve acts it is absolutely not alone in the $200 price class there are a lot of $200 cases some of them pretty damn competitive so just to go through the list again at 150 to maybe 300 or so you've got things like the aged 500 Pete match we received it very positively we like that one is the follow-up to the original H 500 P and did a great job overall at improving you have the aged 500 M if you prefer the same design just a bit fancier it's kind of more direct competitor to this the be quiet dark base or dark dark base 900 Pro that's a DB 900 there dark face Pro 900 whatever it is it's got three words than a number that's Thea the next 200 $250 case that's in the same kind of competition but it's bigger so that's consideration as well if you wanted more large alternatives there's a view so d1 or view Sonia on RGB editions about the same price the NZXT H 700 dama dition or 8 700 eyes about the same price there's the CMC 700 P there are a lot of cases at this price point that's that's kind of the point so you have plenty of options used we've reviewed most of them they're in the charts if you care about thermals we've talked about build quality if you care about that none of those alternatives really do quite what this does which is the two and one build option with the integrated power supply that splits power as opposed to doing two power supplies what you could do you could do it in the Leon the O 11 dynamic which is like a hundred bucks but that's two power supply so it's a completely different approach that said it's probably cheaper to do two power supplies if we're being honest it's just it's a different approach to building so there's nothing wrong with either one you just didn't really not saving money by doing this but this isn't about saving money at nearly five hundred dollars for the combo version that's I mean that's that's an Argentine x27 at that price so if you want it I mean it's pretty unique the case overall is fine we do have some some fundamental problems with some of the design approach discussed earlier thermals are actually pretty okay they were surprisingly decent the fans could use a static pressure improvement they're weak in that department but not terrible and overall it's reasonably competitive and it does something that most the other cases that do compete with it don't which is the two system thing so if you want that it seems fine so overall this case is fine the build quality is quite good in general notwithstanding a few of the plastic elements but the build quality is fine the power supply is good the dual system integration has ways to improve but it's pretty good overall and the thermals are far better than we expected so it's it's really not a bad case the case has receives probably more praise than it deserves it's been a bit overhyped but now that you've seen this you hopefully know exactly what you're getting in for we don't have any major gripes with it there are things that it does well things that it does kind of mediocre so yeah plenty of other options if you want a single ATX system we went through them for you but this also competes that category so hopefully you can sort it out between all those options and all the discussion thank you for watching as always subscribe for more go to patreon.com/scishow and exit topside directly or more importantly go to store down Karen's exes net it's a pic with one of our new limited edition Graf logo foil shirts which has a quad foil design we we upped it a bit the previous one and it will once it's gone it'll be gone so check that out on the store thank you for watching and thank you Chris for the loaner we'll see you all next time