so our tip starter campaign is in full swing you guys have all contributed to
help us move to a new office and take our production quality to the next level
but one of the reward tiers was that we
would take our production quality right back to the original level with a
classic retro unboxing here in the courtyard in front of the NC HQ it has
been years since we've done an outdoor unboxing in this particular location and
we are going full freak retro with the
video experience today guys that
means yeah I I I like I haven't opened
this before all I have is a couple like handwritten notes on what also serves as
a white balance card for our camera before we start filming and uh we are
jumping right into the fantex enu evolve
complete with cars driving around in the background planes flying
overhead and it turning out that I actually only opened the first box so
we're going to roll the intro we'll be back in a
minute save on select Intel CPUs kns and
ssds with special Black Friday rebates from select retailers click now to learn
more all right so here we go this isn't the first fantex case we've checked out
the first one was actually the enu Pro and then we were going going to do a
review of the enu Lux and then we realized kind of halfway into doing the
review Luke was like is this basically the same case that you just reviewed and
I kind of looked at and went yeah so we
emailed fantex and asked them uh yo
what's the deal is this the same case and they're like well um basically uh
yeah but it has like more options and accessories and stuff and like a nicer
finish that Luke and I subjectively don't really come on
think is that much nicer because oh I see it the old classic handles caught on
the styrofoam Luke and I don't really think like a glossy white plastic finish
is really that much nicer or at all than what's on the enu Pro in the first place
so I'm going to have to hurt my fingers
ow or I can reach it from the inside ah yes much smarter pop that out then we
will be able to get this bad boy out all
right so we'll all right see it's been a while since I've done this so we'll
start with the box now that it's out of the box appearance okay I don't need to
read about the appearance functionalities uh it's got drop and
lock SSD brackets toolless side panel with swing door air cooling oh yeah it's
supports yeah that's the one thing I did make notes about and I lost my notes
this really is turning into a classic Linus Tech tips unboxing moment here
isn't it uh so it supports up to a 280
mm in the top or 240 mm supports up to a
240 mm in the front or 140 mm I'm
talking like 120 versus 140 rad sizes and up to a 120 in the back or a 140 in
the back there's a picture of the case on the box if you care very much about
that and all that radiator stuff that I had to do for memory is right there all
right so let's go ahead and find out what this bad boy is all about packing
foam nothing special to be perfectly blunt um although it is better than what
fantex was doing on the pro I always talk about this but it's worth repeating
until manufacturers all start listening new case manufacturers they always make
this mistake they don't spend enough on the packing foam they end up with a bunch of damaged cases and shipping this
is quite a bit better but still a hard foam design because it is a more value
oriented C excuse me case all right
let's pull the plastic off the top and
wow the construction is actually really nice so it's got a full aluminum outer
body uh so the top here is just like a a bent
here you can actually see the thickness of the aluminum here this is like really
spectacular even oh no those are plastic
okay so these bits are plastic here but the top bit is aluminum here there's a
couple little ventilation holes in the top um nothing spectacular I would have
preferred to see fantex use a more open mesh design here because based on just
looking at the case there's not going to be a ton of air flow although it's not
not like they intend for you to install you know triple R9 295 x2s in here in
fact you wouldn't be able to do that because this is an matx case so we'll do
the kind of the outside tour I guess at the front you find no Optical drives
this is a trend that we've started to see emerging starting with the h440 from
NZXT where Optical drives are just being
completely thrown out the window even on
larger matx and ATX Towers but that's oh
okay you got your uh power LED presumably right here as well as a little bit of space for ventilation uh
more plastic pieces back here but it really isn't noticeable on the front
aluminum finish is absolutely beautiful I really like this um but anyway fantex
hasn't quite gone that route and they've still given you the optional option to
have a 5 and 1/4 inch drive you just put it on the back I actually really like
this option even though it's a little bit inconvenient to get at especially if
you have your Tower like kind of on a desk or on the floor right next to the
wall like most people would it's better than not having one at all
it it's more convenient than going and digging one out of a closet even though
it's less convenient than having it on the front so I think this is actually not a bad balance also at the back here
we've got that included 140 mm rear fan
the four PCI slots that you get standard on an matx board you've also got some I
don't know ventilation here rearm mounted bottom mounted power supply that
has a filtered intake on the bottom that's actually kind of hard to get at
that's a bit of a design problem right there you're going to I don't know shave
some of your fingernail off whenever you do that uh this is aluminum too though
really really nice overall construction to this case all right so let's go ahead
and open this bad boy up shall we I'll have to figure out how to do it it's
been a while since I've had to figure out how to open a case on camera I'm okay well I still don't know
so anyway there's a side panel window through the window you can see a little
bit of your power supply you can also see the shrouded basement as well as the
sort of business side of the motherboard so you'll be able to see your CPU area
as well as your graph card area and uh
oh hello the front panel comes off just like that so in here we find uh whatever
this is oh okay so this is just like a light conduit thing for the LED that is
going to illuminate that uh that front power uh that front power LED that's
that's actually kind of creative all right and then here we'll find the just
kind of like janky mounted LED in the middle of nowhere that's going to go
ahead and illuminate that we've also got an included what looks like a 200 mm fan
with an easy to pop off and clean filter right there and then access to the rest
of the of the inside so okay now I have to oh okay this is another Trend I'm
really not sure how I feel about this one these uh these push pins in order to
open up side panels so the first time we saw this was on the bit Phoenix uh oh
balls now I forget what it's called well whatever on that bit Phoenix Pandora
that's right on the bit Phoenix Pandora and on that case it didn't work very
well well because the balls and sockets were not of high enough quality to
really close especially given the cable management options in that case that
didn't allow um the cables to be laid flat enough in here I think it should be
okay on this side but we'll have to have a look at the other side to see how I
feel about it over there it worked really well on that lean Lee like
console killery media Sentry type tower that I looked at a little while ago
fantex does a great job of their accessory boxes so you've got a manual
that is probably actually wow wow not bad not bad at
all they've improved okay and then you've got this handy dandy little
toolbox that has all your screws sorted according to their type size utility
however else you want to interpret that you've also got some included brackets
this looks like a 5 and 1/4 in Drive
bracket or not I don't know and then
you've got uh a couple wow a couple
velcro Cable Management ties some zip ties as well as some oh that's awesome
look at that that's why they have that janky mount on the LED in the front
because you can change it out for whatever color you want so I'm assuming that's blue up there right now but
they've also got white green and red LEDs included oh no that's white in
there by default this one is clearly labeled blue derp all right then we've
also got what appears to be an SSD mounting bracket in
here it's rubberized so I don't know why it would need to be uh okay well someone
will tell me in the comments what this is all
right so screws to take out the uh the
drive mounts here so this is cool so you can actually Mount Your 3 and 1/2 in
drives on these rubber grommets here and then it looks like a variety of other
drives along the rest of it and I'm going to have to just kind of cheat here
and go ahead and find out exactly how many drives fit in here so internal 3
and 1/2 you can do three internal 2 and 1/2 you can do five and it's one slot
for upgrade whatever the heck that means
all right rest of the internal layout you can see the power supply down here
is mounted on these foam bits right here so you're not going to have to deal with
any vibration that's passed from the power supply to the case unless it's at
the back right here cable management is taken care of you're just going to have
to come around to the other side here I think cuz that's the only way we're going to get a look at this all right so
Cable Management uh okay power reset and then front audio is over on the right
really not a huge fan of side panel mounted front uh front connectors but I
guess it's not the end of the world I'm also really not sure how I feel about
these Swinging outd Doors it's uh you can really wow you can really see the
quality of the aluminum here it's so nice and thick love this but it's kind
of a pain to take them off you got to undo four screws to get them off if you
want to lay your system down while you're building it and you don't have
and you want to be able to move this the case around what is nice about it is
that you can see the way they've designed the hinge would allow the case
to be laid flat and the panels just kind of open up against each other here if
you don't mind that what I'd recommend doing is probably chucking a piece of
foam between them if you're going to lay it down in order to work on it so that
they don't bump up against each other conveniently it includes a forementioned
foam all right in here we've got what they call I think drop and lock don't
quote me on that but they've got what I think they call their drop and lock SSD
trays so you go ahead and mount your ssds in there or hard drives they do
include antivibration rubber mounts even though ssds don't need those so if you
want to do 2 and 1/2 in hard drives it's all good and then this is a really nice
inclusion they've got a pwm Fan Hub
included which is fantastic so you actually power all the fans with SATA
12vt power input it does say okay this is important please consult the manual
before connecting this cable that is a very very important detail because
depending on how you have things connected blah blah blah you may or may
not need it if I recall correctly so this goes to the CPU fan header on the
motherboard that's important because a lot of motherboards have pwm connectors
on the board that don't actually support
pwm very correctly but the CPU one
always works correctly because Intel mandates how the CPU pwm header is
supposed to work okay other than that cable management oh down here we've got
a couple 3 and 1/2 in Drive cages so uh
I I actually like this system for 3 and 1/2 in Drive mounting the thing only
thing I can see that I'm not a huge fan of here is Cable Management so you're
going to have to either take off that cover on the other side that keeps the
inside looking clean in order to plug these in or you'll have to kind of reach
down here and kind of reach through here in order to get the drive plugged in
before you slide it all the way back cuz you're going to have to get power and data from the motherboard down there
there's not a ton of room for cable management which is a bit of concern
given that the that the side panel mounts on with push pins but what fantex
generally does a pretty good job of is Cable Management Loop points here so you
can see you've got them here and they've got some nice included little velc ones
as well you've got a couple more here you've got a couple more up here and
then unfortunately not one up to the eight pin here but it shouldn't matter
because that should be about the only thing you're running up this way so
Cable Management grommets I'm not really sure what else to say about it this is
seems like a bit of a a missed opportunity though right here oh no
never mind actually overall Impressions
pretty good now I kind of wish I'd done a full review of it but at this point
it's not like we're going to redo it oh this is cool check this out so there's
thumb screws wow these these side panels are kind of unwieldly these thumb screws
right here can be undone in order to oh I just hit Ed in the face with a side
panel those can be undone if you want um I don't I don't actually know what
exactly oh okay so you can pull that out you could install that'll help you
install a radiator in the front so if you want to pull that and the 5 and 1/4
in mounting out or excuse me three and a half inch Drive bays out then you can go
ahead and do a radiator down the entire front of the case and I guess if you
also don't want to Cable manage through the grommets for some reason it would
also help you with that I do like this thoughtfully positioned Cable Management
hold though this will allow you to get at your front USB 2 or front USB 3 if
that's on the bottom edge of the board and I like this one as well because most
boards have their front panel audio connector here and most case manufacturers don't really consider this
when they're putting in their Cable Management holes so I think that pretty
much wraps it up thank you for checking out my classic unboxing of the enu
evolve and uh speaking of of classic
things okay we have a sponsor today and
I'm going to I'm going to justify this somehow because I don't know how many of
you know this but one of the First videos that I ever did on lineus Tech
chips go go look it up is personal grooming tips I had like a USB shaver
well I have since learned my lesson and uh you know if I have scuff like this
these days then the answer is and I bet you guys all see this one coming
linda.com no dollarshaveclub.com
dollarshaveclub.com is the has a plane R
driving through it in the air see there's a plane up there you'll find the
plane dollarshaveclub.com is the affordable way to get highquality razors
delivered direct and we're back sorry some technical difficulties there this
really is turning into exactly the way we used to do things so Dollar Shave
club.com is the way to get highquality razors delivered directly to your door
once a month so you don't have to venture into to The Great Outdoors where
it's like there's planes and dangerous cars driving around I mean you could get
run over on your way to BU razors then what would you think I mean you want to
look good you know not not like me right now say I need some dollarshaveclub.com
right now actually I'm I'm growing this out on purpose we're about to do the W
show made up as Paul and Kyle so the makeup artist asked me to have some
stubble so uh right when I'm done with this I'll be using dollarshaveclub.com
they also have not only just razors for a couple bucks a month but they've got
their one wipe Charlies that you can also subscribe to those are peppermint scented butt wipes for men they've also
got their Dr Carver shave butter which I will also be using it helps you see what
you're doing goes on clear actually smells quite nice and speaking of
smelling nice they've also got their Dr Carvers after shave so guys join the
club visit dollarshaveclub.com Linus sign up start
saving time and saving money and more freaking planes thanks for watching guys
don't forget to subscribe