Bitfenix Colossus Mini
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,409 words · ~7 min read
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the colossus mini itx and matx borrow
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from a couple of other popular bitfenix products first they borrow their style
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from bitfenix's very first case the colossus and second they borrowed their
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interior design from the prodigy and the prodigy m
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the cooler master glacier 240l CPU cooler delivers the convenience of an
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all-in-one and the performance of a custom water cooler click now to learn
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more you'll be used to this form factor if you've ever used a prodigy but of course
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it does like i said borrow from the colossus in terms of the styling so it
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has a bit of an upward angled shape to
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the top cover here and then it has a bit of an angular helmet-like shape to the
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front that gives it a more aggressive look than something like the prodigy
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ventilation is handled through just these vents on the top for the front
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giving access to fresh air to the five and a quarter inch drive bay that has
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been turned into ventilation as well as the 140 millimeter sized vent in the
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front so the airflow is not going to be exceptional compared to some versions of
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this type of case that have larger vents but it should be adequate for what most
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people install in an matx or mini itx system also on the front we find a piece
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of plastic as well as a bit phoenix logo more on the piece of plastic in just a
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moment on the right hand side we do not find that same nice uh soft touch finish
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that's on the top and the front but just a more standard painted steel finish two
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usb 3.0 ports microphone headphone jack reset and power switches then on the
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left hand side we find not a whole lot of anything on the top not only that
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soft punish touch finish that i talked about before but also a dual 120
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millimeter fan mount with a removable filtered mesh right there on the bottom
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we find another removable fan filter this one for the power supply so you can
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just pop that out the back if you want to go ahead and clean it and then finally on the back we find a 120 or 140
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millimeter fan mount two expansion slots and then a removable plate for the power
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supply that allows you to take that out and slide it back in now there are two
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interior layouts for this case the one we're going to be talking about mostly
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in this video is the mini itx layout
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that is the one that is based on the original prodigy but we actually did a
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build guide not that long ago in the
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matx version of the phenom so that'll
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have the same layout as an matx version of this case would have now before we
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move to the inside of the case let's go ahead and show you what's so special
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about this little plastic what did he just do
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the little plastic strip has what bit phoenix is calling light track
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technology and it's an unbroken line of light that wraps around three sides of
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the case it allows you to change the colors completely anything from blue to
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red to green and you can even add pulsating effects to give it a bit of a
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breathing effect in the dark or if you don't like any of that you can
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just turn it off now because we have two of these cases we were in a pretty
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unique position where we can show you one that has nothing installed in it and
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another one that's been decked out and has a pretty high-end gaming system
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installed so first of all i take off the side panel and this gives us some
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insight into how that whole lighting effect thing works the ones on the side
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panels don't actually need to be plugged in independently they just have like
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little looks like fiber optic tubes that are
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yep not carrying the light around the case and then delivering them here you
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go to these pieces like this just like that so the
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whole thing illuminates very cool actually
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then taking off both side panels we can see that i actually removed the five and a
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quarter inch expansion bay in order to get an h100i in there i also have
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removed some of the three and a half inch expansion bays of which you can
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normally have a maximum of five but in this case we're down to two down here on
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the bottom so there's an additional cage that can be installed this gave us the
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ability to install a long graphics card such as the Radeon hd7970
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that we have installed in here right now so that's how we get that dual 120
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millimeter rad in the front which means we don't have to worry necessarily as
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much about airflow in the case overall because our CPU at least will be able to
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exhaust its heat directly out without
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affecting the rest of the interior components although i do wish that the
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side panel where the graphics card is located would have some perforations for
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airflow to come in as well you can
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install up to a 230 millimeter fan in the front although the only ventilation
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holes in the front are going to be about 140 millimeters you can install up to
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that 140 millimeter fan i talked about before in the back it's got a tool-less
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drive mounting system you go ahead and pop those cages out install your drives
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into them it's tool is for three and a half inch so you just kind of flex them
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like this and then put the drive in or it is tooled for two and a half inch
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which is what we were actually using for this particular little rig it's also
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tool-less at the back for your pci express expansion you go ahead and pop
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this guy out pop this guy out they're all thumb screws go ahead put a graphics
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card in and you're pretty much ready to rock and then as i mentioned before if
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you want to see a version of the m80x system that we did a very high end air
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cooled configuration in you should definitely check out that build guide
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and i've got a bit of a teaser for this video for those of you who stuck around
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till the very end this mini itx version
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with its fewer pci expansion slots but improved liquid cooling support and more
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overall space inside compared to the matx one once you cram a larger
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motherboard in there might be featured in an upcoming water cooled
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build guide for the colossus mini itx
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exciting anyway guys thank you for checking out this video like it if you liked it
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dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment and let me know what you thought
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are you looking forward to the water cooled colossus mini itx build guide i
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actually have something i can show you guys
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that might get you a little bit more amped up about it this box just arrived
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from bitfenix the other day and instead
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of doing my typical sort of you know you could spin it a number of different ways
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you could call it flexible or you could call it lazy but my typical you know
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approach of just doing straight fittings ah yes i will be using their blood red
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fittings i'll be using 45 degree angles
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and stuff like that going for really nice clean tubing runs this time around
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so it's going to be a very different liquid cool build guide from before so
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all the fittings and right i think that's pretty much it
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