Gadgetory

this video was brought to you by NCI X great technology selections and service hey guys this is Dmitry and welcome back to another hard work NOx review then make sure to subscribe to our channel and share your thoughts on this case in the comments down below for a chance to win the actual case we're about to review now beat ratings has been on a roll with new releases that aim to bring a lot of flexibility with cases that suit specific purpose and over the next few Big Finish case reviews you're going to see that each case has its own right either for water cooling or multiple expansion slots so today we're going to take a look at the FINA micro-atx a $99 enclosure capable of packing a punch in this boxy and rather unattractive design if you're looking for something with a bit more character than the Phenom series won't be for you for micro ATX case though it's actually quite compact it may appear to be a lot wider than it actually is because of its short height the front and top panel covered in beat Vinick says soft touch treatment which brings that quality feel to ordinary plastic the chassis is minimalistic aesthetics don't bring much to the table with a bare front panel with the logo peeking through and ventilation strips on the sides after taking off the panel I notice that ventilation strips weren't fully open but just a few circular cutouts and since this is the intake for your power supply I would have liked to see less restrictive design all the connections are located on the side with two USB 3 ports audio jacks and PR buttons at the back since the motherboard is flipped we get a total of five expansion slots with some venting area above the PCI brackets utilize a job down clamp that locks all the brackets a place which is actually quite convenient for tool free assembly we also have an exhaust fan and a power cord insert that will cover a bit later the key stands on quality rubberized feet and then we also get this magnetic cover that's supposed to prevent warm air from the power supply exhaust from re-entering the chassis from below but say you're only exhausting air from the case using the top pins this would create positive pressure and this Hannah would prevent all the dust from getting picked up and then the top of the case we have a removable dust filter with support for those 120mm fans now there's a lot to talk about when it comes to features so let's pop that panel open and let's check out the interior first I would like to cover all the drive storage starting with a side panel that has all the connections mounted on there but also supports to us as these next as a drive bracket that is removable with four screws that can house three SSDs at the front and two mechanical drives at the back simultaneously which means stock drive storage is actually pretty good mechanical drives use the sliding method with rubber grommets and say quite securely in place now after mounting the bracket you do lose a bit of clearance on the inside for your CPU cooler so measuring the space until the three and a half inch drive the Phenom will support towers up to 150 millimeters so that's something to keep in mind behind the front panel it's less strange to see an optical drive slot but it also has its own purpose which can house extra drives with this Bakke converter this allows installation of a single mechanical or a solid-state drive it does however come with a few compromises now first mounting this bracket in place is quite easy however it blocks one of the top pins and you'll need all the airflow you can get to stay cool so it's a rather unpleasant compromise second because it sticks out you lose clearance for the top three PCI brackets so if you need all the storage you can get it certainly is an option quite a wobbly option but it's nevertheless there I would recommend just removing the five in the quarter inch dog to get just a little extra room for all your wiring moving on to airflow the Phenom comes with two 120 millimeter fans both of which are set to exhaust one at the rear and one at the bottom and you'll certainly would want to utilize the top fans to cool your GPU but only if your motherboard allows and you don't require the last PCI slot the second fan is supported at the bottom this would mainly be used for exhaust for positive pressure and plus there's no dust filter so intake is out of the question and the 200 millimeter fan is also supported if you want to utilise higher airflow at lower also another feature is support for two mechanical drives at the bottom in case you really need to cramp the Phenom with storage and they use the same mounting with rubber grommets although I really wish Bettina could have included something of higher quality or perhaps a bit larger as they ripped in pieces as I slid the drives in place which isn't all that Pleasant now given we have a rather unconventional spot for the power supply its own power outlet is included at the back with the power cord extended and routed through the power supply bracket this is a very simple installation of first mounting the bracket onto the power supply plug it in and placing the bracket back and it will intake air from the front and there's also plenty of room above the power supply for cables plus even with the five and a quarter inch drive bay installed there's still a good amount of clearance for all your cable routing now our unit is 180 millimeters long and it does just slightly block the first pci bracket so anything over nine inches won't fit but otherwise 12 inch cards are supported no problem which is actually quite impressive so let's get on with the assembly and let's see how the Phenom micro-atx handles the loaded system and for one there isn't a cable management system in place for example you cannot route any cables behind the motherboard and there's no way to secure the cables inside the case and that was ready for some mess of a chassis and well it's pretty close with all the cables just hanging out like the eight pin or the 24 pin motherboard cable and plug in or GTX 590 it seems everything is in place and ready to go and as you can see there is no way to route cables at the rear because there's no cutouts there is some space at the back and I would have liked to see in the 8 pin CPU cut out just to make things a lot easier the GPU however is fairly close to the top utilizing those two top PCI slots and cooling really shouldn't be an issue considering its proximity to the intake area now here comes the challenging part the side panel and all the connections on it I had to remove the GPU in order to access the connections on the motherboard and D Phenix includes a USB 2 adapter which came in handy and starting with all this cable mess first the drives inside the panel the all the audio and USB and only then I was able to put a graphics card back in then comes the side drive bracket which in itself is a whole lot of challenge simply because of the wiring now there's no clearance issues even if you populate all of the available slots on the side panel and the bracket which is good news I'll just be a nightmare for all the cables you'll have to deal with but everything fits in well and the chassis is ready to crunch some numbers however I wasn't completely happy at the assembly process it's not very user friendly but it turns out that you can mount the side panel with all the connections on the other side you just have to flip the panel which is not a big deal and this way you get more convenient access for all your components and no longer do you have to redo all your wiring every time you have to remove the side panel now overall I think the fina micro ATX from BitFenix has a role within the micro ATX options as it provides a lot of Drive storage spots like on a bracket or the side panel without compromise we have long GPU support even with large power supplies dual exhaust at the top and the bottom while keeping a very compact form factor but like with many small shot sees you run into problems with space efficiency and I feel the Phenom could have been designed slightly better to allow a more convenient cable routing which i think is the biggest downfall of this case as it's quite difficult to work in but flipping that side panel sure simplifies things and I would highly recommend doing so the Phenom certainly makes the most out of its size though and without a doubt can house an enthusiast system and BitFenix are certainly on the right track moving towards smaller designs but we need to see more space efficiency and more emphasis on user friendly assembly so thanks guys for watching and again we'll be giving away this exact case all you have to do is be subscribed to the Haruka Knox youtube channel and leave a comments down below share your thoughts on this chassis and we'll see you in next review