Gadgetory

a data XP gv2 memory kits are optimized for the latest Intel gaming platforms check the link in the video description for more details welcome to my unboxing and overview of the BitFenix prodigy M now if you've already heard of the prodigy then I won't need to explain to you what it is it is an MIT X case that is pretty stylish has support for lots of radiators and a generally high-performance hardware in a relatively small form-factor now the prodigy M was bit Phoenix's response to long as I guess sometimes a criticism of the prodigy which was that for an ITX case that is a single expansion slot motherboard case um it really wasn't that small and bit peanuts sentiment well yeah but you can put a lot of other hardware in there like you know radiators and the lacked on a harddrive and all that kind of cool stuff and users will know we want something that's the size of the prodigy that we can put an M ATX case and that is one with four expansion slots and that my friends is what we have here today this is the prodigy M which from the outside looks basically the same as the original prodigy so here on the front of the case you've got a nice open airflow grill so you're going to be able to bring in fresh air you've got a five and a quarter inch drive bay right here you've got the sort of Mac Pro s looking handles on the top that are made of what they call fiber flex or something along those lines which is basically BitFenix this way of saying they're supposed to be flexible because a lot of people complained in the past about them bowing a little bit so I'm like well that's that's by design on the side we've got power reset headphone microphone jacks as well as two USB 3.0 ports the finish it actually varies a fair bit so on the side panel here we've got a powder-coated black so that's a bit of a matte black actually looks quite nice it's got a bit of a shine to it then the plastic parts on the top use their soft touch feel so that's a soft touch plastic and then the grilles themselves use a bit of a shinier paint finish on them compared to the rest of it at the back I yes this is where we find the differences so we've got a 120 or 140 millimeter fan mount your i/o a little bit of extra ventilation here tool this removal of the PCI Express covers so you just go ahead and undo this thumb screw right here lift the whole thing up they're all going to come free so I don't really want to do that because it's really really easy to do that all right so this magnetic guy right here on the bottom is actually a heat shield which is I guess okay so when you look at the bottom you find the first hint as to the unusual layout so there's your power supply in the front of the case on the bottom there's also mounting points for fans down here as well as anti vibration mounting points for three and a half inch hard drives so I guess the idea is if you fill the bottom with drives and you don't need those ventilation holes and you don't want the heat being exhausted by your power supply to to get your hard drives hot you might want to put this on I suspect in practice it's not going to make that much of a difference but hey you've got the option should you desire it you might have noticed we switched to a white prodigy M case don't worry we have we have not done anything crazy voodoo magic wise we just happen to have a black one and a white one the last thing left over from the original prodigy up here is the removable fan filter slash grille on the top that allows you to have access to the I yes up to 240 millimeter slim radiator that can be installed on the top however it should be noted that that might interfere with some of your expandability and once you get it open and that will become more apparent so we're going to open up the side that has the i/o on it Brandon actually asked me while we were unboxing it why the i/o is on the side and the answer is because on the original prodigy design the entire front of the case was taken up by the five and a quarter inch bay and ventilation so oh yeah that's speaking of ventilation the white design just like on the original prodigy doesn't have the vent holes whereas the black one does so because it's all taken up by ventilation the i/o is moved to the side and because the prodigy M is based very closely on the original prodigy and it wasn't a complete redesign from the ground up well they reused that side placed I oh so anyway because it reuses most of the design of the original prodigy they weren't going to retool it for the IO to not be on the side because some people actually like it so here on the side panel you see a couple of two and a half inch SSD mounts that you can actually mount to these plastic ventilated grills right here and other than that that basically just comes off like that now now we see this is not the same case at all so the original prodigy had the power supply mounted in the back the prodigy M has the power come in the back but that is using an extension cable so you can see right here it's wired up internally that runs to the power supply position here in the front of the case so this will actually plug in directly to the power supply down here which will sit up here in the front also the motherboard tray which was horizontal in the original prodigy has now been adjusted to be vertical so the motherboard is actually mounted here in an inverted position giving you five PCI expansion slots assuming that you don't use any of these are rather this 120 millimeter fan mount over here which gives you a lot of flexibility because some M ATX cases even though they only have four slots by design some of them put their second PCIe 8x slot at the very bottom meaning that if you have two dual slot graphics cards in SLI or crossfire having an extra external slot like this allows you to install an additional card such as a sound card in between them so I give BitFenix a lot of credit for thinking of that then if you don't use it then you don't use it great install a fan there and don't worry about it alright so included as well we've got two BitFenix 120 millimeter fans so one in the bottom down here meaning you're probably gonna want to pull that heat shield out in the default configuration and one over here the case supports a total of four three and a quart of three and a half inch drives or five two and a half inch drives and you can play around a fair bit with where they go so you can see there are Drive mounts here with the rubber vibration mount our anti vibration mounts being for three and a half inch and these little hooks as well as these other ones over here being for two and a half inch drives as well as here we go we've gotten accessory box you can also support up to a 120 millimeter single radiator in the back of the case so that gives you a fair bit of liquid cooling flexibility old well not too nearly the same degree as the original prodigy because the motherboard wasn't taking up that much space in the original prodigy which is part of why you weren't able to fit that much hardware in it from a motherboard and graphics card perspective but you could do lots of liquid cooling stuff so there's a USB to 2 USB three adopted here so that allows you to take the USB 3 ports plug them into USB 2 board and have them run in USB 2 mode as well as all the little hardware's that you're going to need to install your system inside the case we're going to do the thumb screws on the other side which will give us an even better look at the interior cable management is much better in the prodigy M compared to the original prodigy which tended to be a bit of a challenge although because they never released a windowed version of it I guess it was just mostly for the OCD folks like myself who even cared the build quality is still very solid I mean the prodigy is not a cheaply you know flimsy side panel built case which is great and carries on here we also see it has an extremely large motherboard cutout so you're going to have no difficulty installing or uninstalling back plate mounted CPU coolers mat without taking out your motherboard this also gives you another look at the front here so you can see that the front fan options have not necessarily been reduced on paper because you still got all these mounting holes but remember guys there's a power supply here so yeah that's that's that's not an option as much as it was before I would probably install the power supply pulling air through the front particularly if you get the black version of the case which as I mentioned before has more ventilation due to those grills in the front so just like the prodigy it's available in a variety of colors it's M ATX instead of ITX supports fewer drives but more expansion cards and basically it comes down to you what you want to go with if you want the most powerful small form-factor build m ATX is the way to go because it allows you to get a rampage for gene throw something like a 30 or a 49 30 k or 49 60 X 6 core in there and have a very very powerful little box thank you for checking out this unboxing don't forget to like it if you liked it dislike it if you just liked it leave a comment if you're not sure what to make of this tape that's stuck to my arm here and don't forget to check out the latest tech tips comm Foreman as always don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips from unboxings reviews and other computer videos and leave a comment too if you think my outro has gotten too long