Gadgetory


All Cool Mind-blowing Gadgets You Love in One Place

Bitfenix Phenom Series Compact Computer Case Unboxing & Overview

2013-10-17
the fractal design define our for case gets featured on the when show build logs of the week section more than any other case click now to learn more about it I'm going to spare you guys the unboxing portion of this unboxing because we have a lot to do it comes in a pretty decent dual-layered box and has hard foam inside which normally bothers me more particularly with larger cases but with smaller cases it bothers me less because there's less concern that they're going to be extremely heavy and cause breakage when in shipping so this my friends is the BitFenix Phenom or phantom or however you prefer to pronounce that word like the older AMD processors but these are all new sort of they're based very closely on the original BitFenix prodigy but with a couple of upgrades that I personally think are very very nice so let's take the white one it's available in a variety of colors just like the prodigy and we're going to have black and white here in the showcase and we've got a nice little bit Fenix logo that to me is a lot more subtle than the one that was on the original prodigy that really popped out of the front ventilation wise it's also taken a bit of a middle row the original prodigy had either like little tiny vents along the sides or it had a full mesh front well the Phenom or fennel has reasonable sized vents on the sides here and then it has a closed front just like the white version of the prodigy that I think gives it a very sleek very classic look but doesn't compromise on cooling to nearly the same extent the white prodigy did IO is still on the side wouldn't have minded seeing this move to the front or the top but every position has disadvantages like even on the top you know your cat can step on it or whatever else I have had that happen so there you go neither of them are windowed variants you've got the same kind of accents up here on the top that you've got on the side with little grills and then on the top of the case you've got that same removable fan grille that we saw on the prodigy that gives you access to is radiator support so you can check a dual 120 millimeter radiator in there no problem which leads us to the back of the case so this is where not all fiends are created equally there are two versions just like The Prodigy now where there's one that supports mini-itx motherboards at most so that's the one right here on your left and there's one that supports micro ATX so that is for expansion slot motherboards as opposed to just one but compromises some of the other expand ability with respect to drives and water cooling radiators and other stuff like that so let's break these babies open and compare them internally so I've loosened all the screws and it's time for the big reveal much like the original prodigy the build quality is very solid nice strong side panels almost no flex to them whatsoever they've got some nice weight to them which unfortunately does make the cases a little bit heavier but what do you want you want it to be light you want to be strong you want it to be cheap you know you got a bit compromising somewhere alright so removing these side panels we are going to reveal a couple of things number one is the SSD mounts that are built into the sides here you can put two two and a half inch drives there no problem as well as all the interior isle that USB 3.0 port can be adapted to USB 2 there is an included adapter there's a custom PCB here that handles all of the i/o so we find the same thing on the other one and whoa everything else that's inside these cases looks pretty darn different and yet familiar so this one right here what do you recognize that from well that is the interior of the original BitFenix prodigy so you've got fan mat here at the front lots of room for intake whether you want to mount you know dual 120s or I think you actually have to remove the five and a quarter inch maybe but you can do that you just remove the front bezel and pull that off you can do a 120 s or a radiator in there you can do you know 140 s I believe it can do 160 s and/or 180s there's lots of different options in there for fans in the front you've also got five expansion Bay's here that are compatible with either 2 to half inch or three and a half inch drives a five and a quarter inch expansion bay that can be used for something else should you so desire in fact it comes with a three and a half inch plastic adapter in it and that pretty much does it for this side live with a cable management room here and of course that attention to detail see the way that they folded over the metal here so it doesn't leave any sharp edges I'm going to go head and give you another angle on that that means you're not going to cut open the power supply cables that you're trying to run through here in cable management is good because this is an extremely tight fit for your power supply in this particular case they have a fan filter on the bottom of the venom that has the ITX layout because that is that means you are intended to install your power supply with the fan facing down so the heat doesn't interfere with any other components in your system and over here on the other side you find a little bit more room for cable management as well as I yes if you were to remove and check this out all screws very few rivets on this case if you were to remove all your drive cages you could actually make room for radiators here at the front and you could just mount your to a half inch SSDs to see inside here you could mount them to the other side of the power supply and motherboard tray enclosure and you could add SSDs that way so you can throw four SSDs in here having actually removed all of the drive cages giving you lots of room for water cooling it has support for a single 120 or 140 millimeter fan in the back and two expansion slots which might seem weird because ITX only has one but that my friends is because you can install a dual slot graphics card without having to do any modding or anything like that so there you go that is the ITX Phenom or phantom whichever you prefer now let's go through the n ATX film or phenom whichever you prefer so you can see right here that our five and a quarter inch sled seems to have been attached to here for some reason these are engineering samples so it's possible that the packaging wasn't quite final because I know for a fact that this box is supposed to be there and top this guy right here so this is a five and a quarter to three and a half inch or two and a half inch adapter just like we found in the other case and it can go up here in the five and a quarter inch cage you also can install either using the vibrate anti vibration mounts here two three and a half inch or two two and a half inch drives using the hooks as well as the oh looks like three oh my bad sorry about that so three two and a half inch drives if you prefer to go that rate using the hooks um a screws right here you can also see that the fan layout is extremely different there's no power supply at the back so there's 120 or 140 here five expansion slots which is great because some mini ATX boards even though they only have four slots have their full speed PCIe right on the bottom so if you want to put a graphics card in there running an sli or crossfire you're going to have to make use of that fifth slot great a bit Phoenix to think of this your i/o your tool lists removal of these slot hold downs as well as oh yeah there's a power in but hold on a second where does that go okay it goes here so there's an extension cable here that actually runs to the power supply which is boom on the bottom of the case so that means these feet are important you're going to be taking up air into the bottom of the case this heat shield is for use if you install hard drives as opposed to fans in the bottom here although I personally don't anticipate that that'll make much of a practical difference to the performance of the of the you know cooling those drives or anything like that the rest of the interior is pretty straightforward so you can find your n ATX motherboard tray over here cable management should be relatively straightforward in here you should be able to hide most of it either up here in the top and the five and a quarter inch bay that you're unlikely to be using because whoa there is no five and a quarter inch front ha so guys remember the five and a quarter inch they internally is because a lot of these components have a lot of the design has been reused from The Prodigy so you're really meant to just install drives with the adapters alright so you can see here so you can hide all your cables over here your n ATX motherboard tray is reasonably strong considering that it has an extremely large CPU cutout again with that folded over metal so you're not going to accidentally cut anything on it you can also install more drives so there's anti vibration mounts here as well as more fans down in the bottom of the case should you see fit so you can put dual 120 s down there it should be noted that the water cooling options are not nearly as extensive for the n ATX version and if you wanted to install a dual 140 millimeter rat in the top while you could you would be a little bit limited in terms of which expansion slots you can use because there would be some interference there so if you really want to fill it full of water cooling radiators you might want to go with the MIT X version you can of course still install all a single 120 millimeter radiator the back without any difficulty I think that pretty much covers it other than the accessories that are included and I can tell you what's in here before I even open it so there's a USB 3 2 USB 2 adapter for the built-in i/o and there's a bunch of screws and some cable ties don't forget to subscribe - Texas from boxing's reviews and other computer videos like this video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment if you thought it was kind of weird that I unboxed two different colors of two different cases within the same video and if you're ok with it let me know if you weren't okay with it and let me know about that too check out the Linus tech tips form if you want to discuss any of the latest cool technology that we've unboxed on this channel and as always I think I already said don't forget to subscribe and I have completely lost track of what I've said and haven't said at this point so yeah
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.