Gadgetory

welcome to my unboxing of the BitFenix Merc this is the open well done there's two versions there's the alpha with the window and then there's the beta which does not wait now I'm confused well we have the alpha so we're going to find out exactly what that is once we get it opened up so big phoenix has been releasing a number of fairly interesting cases one of the things that really sets them apart from their competition is their soft feel or soft touch finish which basically feels instead of like a painted metal or like plastic like a velvety velvety soft plastic and I don't know how to describe it other than you know high-end gaming mice how they often have like a bit of a rubberized or like a soft grip to them it's kind of like that and at some point the case comes out of the box and at that point in time and no sooner we can take a closer look at so value gaming cases ouch shock value gaming cases are no new thing for mechanics we had a look at the outlaw a little while ago which was kind of cool because it used that altered ATX style and it was as far as I can tell the least to ever use so here we go with the Mercs oh haha the Alfa has the cooling panel on the side so this basically does not look like we can mount a 120 millimeter fan but I'm going to be that surprised if you could kind of like to jigger it to to work so hold on a second let's just grab yeah so let's see it looks like it does line up yeah so you can just use the the outside holes here in order to screw a vent in if you really wanted okay maybe they intended that surely they intended that they call it a cooling side panel so the Alfa has cooling side panel to by 120 millimeter optional see I haven't come up with anything new here so on the top we've got dual 120 millimeter fans as well and then on the back we have an additional 120 millimeter fan you can also mount a 92 or an 80 millimeter fan on the back should you see fit a couple water cooling holes we've got seven expansion slots in this particular case so you're gonna be fitting standard ATX motherboards only in here let's have a closer look at the front before we get any further actually this case does not have soft touch so this is meant to be more of a straight value case we've gone a three and a half inch expansion Bay to five and a three five and a quarter inch expansion base mesh at the front here and on the top we have four USB 2.0 microphone headphone power and reset switches so let's go ahead and take the side panel off here which hopefully I can do not there we go comes out this way okay we've got our front panel connectors these are all covered in a black heat shrink and then here heat shrink at the end and then just a blacks leaving so we've got our HD audio we've got two USB front panel connectors and then last but not least we've got our front our presets which hard drive LEDs and all that good stuff in sadly Oh doesn't look like really much of anything too too different from what we've seen in the past from a variety of different cases so hard drive wise we've got one two three four five six seven three and a half inch hard drives we've got another one hundred and twenty millimeter fan here in the bottom so in terms of cooling there's a fair number of options that are available to you I'm just going to go ahead and pull this out so there are two 120 millimeter cooling fan positions on the front and if you go ahead and squeeze these together comes out a lot more easily I suspect Oh interesting having a bit of trouble here give me a sec guys got it guys I just had to heave on it a little bit so we've got two 120 millimeter cooling fans here in the front looks like you can also mount 92s if you so desire so you can use those to pool your drives here you can see the inside of the case of the hole so there's the interface for the front panel whatnot but I can't really think of any good reason why you there we go want to disconnect those so just leave those attached what else we got here CPU cutout is right here so it's a fairly small CPU cutout but as long as your CPU socket isn't sort of more to the right then you shouldn't have too much trouble reaching a backplate CPU cooler and replacing it without actually removing the motherboard from the case I guess there's not too much else to say bottom-mounted power supply 120mm fan here to 120s in the front all black interior which may or may not matter to you because you can see inside the case a little bit but it's gonna be less if you actually mount fans here so there that should give you guys some idea of how much you can actually see down into the case so I do like the all black interiors but I'm personally more more inclined to say it's necessary if you do have a side panel window so thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the BitFenix merc don't forget to subscribe - tech tips for unboxings reviews and other computer videos