Phanteks Enthoo EVOLV - Classic Unboxing, NCIX Courtyard
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
3,381 words · ~16 min read
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so our tip starter campaign is in full swing you guys have all contributed to
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help us move to a new office and take our production quality to the next level
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but one of the reward tiers was that we
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would take our production quality right back to the original level with a
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classic retro unboxing here in the courtyard in front of the NC HQ it has
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been years since we've done an outdoor unboxing in this particular location and
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we are going full freak retro with the
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video experience today guys that
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means yeah I I I like I haven't opened
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this before all I have is a couple like handwritten notes on what also serves as
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a white balance card for our camera before we start filming and uh we are
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jumping right into the fantex enu evolve
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complete with cars driving around in the background planes flying
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overhead and it turning out that I actually only opened the first box so
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we're going to roll the intro we'll be back in a
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minute save on select Intel CPUs kns and
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ssds with special Black Friday rebates from select retailers click now to learn
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more all right so here we go this isn't the first fantex case we've checked out
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the first one was actually the enu Pro and then we were going going to do a
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review of the enu Lux and then we realized kind of halfway into doing the
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review Luke was like is this basically the same case that you just reviewed and
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I kind of looked at and went yeah so we
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emailed fantex and asked them uh yo
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what's the deal is this the same case and they're like well um basically uh
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yeah but it has like more options and accessories and stuff and like a nicer
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finish that Luke and I subjectively don't really come on
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think is that much nicer because oh I see it the old classic handles caught on
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the styrofoam Luke and I don't really think like a glossy white plastic finish
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is really that much nicer or at all than what's on the enu Pro in the first place
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so I'm going to have to hurt my fingers
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ow or I can reach it from the inside ah yes much smarter pop that out then we
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will be able to get this bad boy out all
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right so we'll all right see it's been a while since I've done this so we'll
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start with the box now that it's out of the box appearance okay I don't need to
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read about the appearance functionalities uh it's got drop and
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lock SSD brackets toolless side panel with swing door air cooling oh yeah it's
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supports yeah that's the one thing I did make notes about and I lost my notes
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this really is turning into a classic Linus Tech tips unboxing moment here
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isn't it uh so it supports up to a 280
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mm in the top or 240 mm supports up to a
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240 mm in the front or 140 mm I'm
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talking like 120 versus 140 rad sizes and up to a 120 in the back or a 140 in
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the back there's a picture of the case on the box if you care very much about
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that and all that radiator stuff that I had to do for memory is right there all
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right so let's go ahead and find out what this bad boy is all about packing
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foam nothing special to be perfectly blunt um although it is better than what
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fantex was doing on the pro I always talk about this but it's worth repeating
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until manufacturers all start listening new case manufacturers they always make
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this mistake they don't spend enough on the packing foam they end up with a bunch of damaged cases and shipping this
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is quite a bit better but still a hard foam design because it is a more value
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oriented C excuse me case all right
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let's pull the plastic off the top and
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wow the construction is actually really nice so it's got a full aluminum outer
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body uh so the top here is just like a a bent
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here you can actually see the thickness of the aluminum here this is like really
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spectacular even oh no those are plastic
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okay so these bits are plastic here but the top bit is aluminum here there's a
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couple little ventilation holes in the top um nothing spectacular I would have
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preferred to see fantex use a more open mesh design here because based on just
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looking at the case there's not going to be a ton of air flow although it's not
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not like they intend for you to install you know triple R9 295 x2s in here in
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fact you wouldn't be able to do that because this is an matx case so we'll do
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the kind of the outside tour I guess at the front you find no Optical drives
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this is a trend that we've started to see emerging starting with the h440 from
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NZXT where Optical drives are just being
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completely thrown out the window even on
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larger matx and ATX Towers but that's oh
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okay you got your uh power LED presumably right here as well as a little bit of space for ventilation uh
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more plastic pieces back here but it really isn't noticeable on the front
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aluminum finish is absolutely beautiful I really like this um but anyway fantex
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hasn't quite gone that route and they've still given you the optional option to
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have a 5 and 1/4 inch drive you just put it on the back I actually really like
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this option even though it's a little bit inconvenient to get at especially if
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you have your Tower like kind of on a desk or on the floor right next to the
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wall like most people would it's better than not having one at all
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it it's more convenient than going and digging one out of a closet even though
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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
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we've got that included 140 mm rear fan
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the four PCI slots that you get standard on an matx board you've also got some I
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don't know ventilation here rearm mounted bottom mounted power supply that
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has a filtered intake on the bottom that's actually kind of hard to get at
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that's a bit of a design problem right there you're going to I don't know shave
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some of your fingernail off whenever you do that uh this is aluminum too though
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really really nice overall construction to this case all right so let's go ahead
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and open this bad boy up shall we I'll have to figure out how to do it it's
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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
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so anyway there's a side panel window through the window you can see a little
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bit of your power supply you can also see the shrouded basement as well as the
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sort of business side of the motherboard so you'll be able to see your CPU area
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as well as your graph card area and uh
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oh hello the front panel comes off just like that so in here we find uh whatever
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this is oh okay so this is just like a light conduit thing for the LED that is
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going to illuminate that uh that front power uh that front power LED that's
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that's actually kind of creative all right and then here we'll find the just
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kind of like janky mounted LED in the middle of nowhere that's going to go
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ahead and illuminate that we've also got an included what looks like a 200 mm fan
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with an easy to pop off and clean filter right there and then access to the rest
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of the of the inside so okay now I have to oh okay this is another Trend I'm
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really not sure how I feel about this one these uh these push pins in order to
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open up side panels so the first time we saw this was on the bit Phoenix uh oh
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balls now I forget what it's called well whatever on that bit Phoenix Pandora
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that's right on the bit Phoenix Pandora and on that case it didn't work very
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well well because the balls and sockets were not of high enough quality to
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really close especially given the cable management options in that case that
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didn't allow um the cables to be laid flat enough in here I think it should be
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okay on this side but we'll have to have a look at the other side to see how I
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feel about it over there it worked really well on that lean Lee like
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console killery media Sentry type tower that I looked at a little while ago
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fantex does a great job of their accessory boxes so you've got a manual
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that is probably actually wow wow not bad not bad at
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all they've improved okay and then you've got this handy dandy little
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toolbox that has all your screws sorted according to their type size utility
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however else you want to interpret that you've also got some included brackets
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this looks like a 5 and 1/4 in Drive
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bracket or not I don't know and then
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you've got uh a couple wow a couple
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velcro Cable Management ties some zip ties as well as some oh that's awesome
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look at that that's why they have that janky mount on the LED in the front
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because you can change it out for whatever color you want so I'm assuming that's blue up there right now but
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they've also got white green and red LEDs included oh no that's white in
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there by default this one is clearly labeled blue derp all right then we've
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also got what appears to be an SSD mounting bracket in
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here it's rubberized so I don't know why it would need to be uh okay well someone
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will tell me in the comments what this is all
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right so screws to take out the uh the
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drive mounts here so this is cool so you can actually Mount Your 3 and 1/2 in
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drives on these rubber grommets here and then it looks like a variety of other
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drives along the rest of it and I'm going to have to just kind of cheat here
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and go ahead and find out exactly how many drives fit in here so internal 3
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and 1/2 you can do three internal 2 and 1/2 you can do five and it's one slot
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for upgrade whatever the heck that means
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all right rest of the internal layout you can see the power supply down here
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is mounted on these foam bits right here so you're not going to have to deal with
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any vibration that's passed from the power supply to the case unless it's at
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the back right here cable management is taken care of you're just going to have
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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
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Cable Management uh okay power reset and then front audio is over on the right
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really not a huge fan of side panel mounted front uh front connectors but I
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guess it's not the end of the world I'm also really not sure how I feel about
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these Swinging outd Doors it's uh you can really wow you can really see the
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quality of the aluminum here it's so nice and thick love this but it's kind
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of a pain to take them off you got to undo four screws to get them off if you
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want to lay your system down while you're building it and you don't have
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and you want to be able to move this the case around what is nice about it is
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that you can see the way they've designed the hinge would allow the case
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to be laid flat and the panels just kind of open up against each other here if
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you don't mind that what I'd recommend doing is probably chucking a piece of
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foam between them if you're going to lay it down in order to work on it so that
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they don't bump up against each other conveniently it includes a forementioned
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foam all right in here we've got what they call I think drop and lock don't
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quote me on that but they've got what I think they call their drop and lock SSD
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trays so you go ahead and mount your ssds in there or hard drives they do
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include antivibration rubber mounts even though ssds don't need those so if you
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want to do 2 and 1/2 in hard drives it's all good and then this is a really nice
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inclusion they've got a pwm Fan Hub
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included which is fantastic so you actually power all the fans with SATA
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12vt power input it does say okay this is important please consult the manual
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before connecting this cable that is a very very important detail because
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depending on how you have things connected blah blah blah you may or may
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not need it if I recall correctly so this goes to the CPU fan header on the
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motherboard that's important because a lot of motherboards have pwm connectors
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on the board that don't actually support
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pwm very correctly but the CPU one
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always works correctly because Intel mandates how the CPU pwm header is
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supposed to work okay other than that cable management oh down here we've got
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a couple 3 and 1/2 in Drive cages so uh
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I I actually like this system for 3 and 1/2 in Drive mounting the thing only
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thing I can see that I'm not a huge fan of here is Cable Management so you're
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going to have to either take off that cover on the other side that keeps the
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inside looking clean in order to plug these in or you'll have to kind of reach
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down here and kind of reach through here in order to get the drive plugged in
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before you slide it all the way back cuz you're going to have to get power and data from the motherboard down there
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there's not a ton of room for cable management which is a bit of concern
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given that the that the side panel mounts on with push pins but what fantex
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generally does a pretty good job of is Cable Management Loop points here so you
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can see you've got them here and they've got some nice included little velc ones
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as well you've got a couple more here you've got a couple more up here and
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then unfortunately not one up to the eight pin here but it shouldn't matter
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because that should be about the only thing you're running up this way so
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Cable Management grommets I'm not really sure what else to say about it this is
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seems like a bit of a a missed opportunity though right here oh no
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never mind actually overall Impressions
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pretty good now I kind of wish I'd done a full review of it but at this point
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it's not like we're going to redo it oh this is cool check this out so there's
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thumb screws wow these these side panels are kind of unwieldly these thumb screws
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right here can be undone in order to oh I just hit Ed in the face with a side
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panel those can be undone if you want um I don't I don't actually know what
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exactly oh okay so you can pull that out you could install that'll help you
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install a radiator in the front so if you want to pull that and the 5 and 1/4
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in mounting out or excuse me three and a half inch Drive bays out then you can go
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ahead and do a radiator down the entire front of the case and I guess if you
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also don't want to Cable manage through the grommets for some reason it would
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also help you with that I do like this thoughtfully positioned Cable Management
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hold though this will allow you to get at your front USB 2 or front USB 3 if
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that's on the bottom edge of the board and I like this one as well because most
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boards have their front panel audio connector here and most case manufacturers don't really consider this
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when they're putting in their Cable Management holes so I think that pretty
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much wraps it up thank you for checking out my classic unboxing of the enu
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evolve and uh speaking of of classic
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