Bitfenix Raider Gaming Case With USB3 & Soft Touch Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
2,370 words · ~11 min read
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welcome to my unboxing of the bit Phoenix Raider so this is actually a
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fairly exciting case because it's
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heavy no it's not that heavy I'm just I'm just messing with you guys uh so
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this is a gaming oriented case as most of bit Phoenix's case products actually
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are they're a very gaming friendly company they go for kind of a a well
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without without overdoing it you know like a performance aesthetic but still
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very clean looking on a lot of their cases especially the Shinobi I love the
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Shinobi and the Shinobi XL for the plain Sleek aesthetic that is still very very
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performance friendly so let's go ahead and get this opened up this is the first
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case that I've yet encountered that supports up to four usb3 front ports so
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that's uh that's something they're doing that no one else has uh has actually
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been able to execute on yet all right comes packed in in a in a
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hard foam we got about an inch a packing on either side once again you know I'm
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trying not to harp on this too much these days but I would much rather see a
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soft foam but at least it's not a huge case like the Cosmos 2 or something like
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that coming with a hard foam uh so it's not as heavy and it's not going to be as
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full of Hardware as something like that so it's less likely to break very nice
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actually very slick they just keep getting better and better at this stuff
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so let's go through the overall outside features then we're going to open it up
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so first of all we've got four 5 and 1/4 inch bays and then we've got uh what
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appear to be uh let me just see yep so these are
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this whole front meshy intake frontness
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is all filtered so you can very easily blow the dust out of it if you want
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you've got a gorgeous looking bit Phoenix logo that's actually made of
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metal instead of just being like some plastic thing or maybe it's not made of
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plastic or maybe it's not made of metal maybe it is made of plastic but either way it feels really good overall really
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sharp it's cold to the touch so I don't know maybe it's metal on top of plastic
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I'm not going to spend too much time speculating about it let's move around
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to the other side this side is pretty plain you got a couple little bits here
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so that you can grab onto them when you're taking the side panel off on the
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other side here very very plain as well very Sleek clean aesthetic on the top is
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where some of the action starts to really happen so here we've got an
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integrated fan speed controller okay so Max and Min we've also got oh is it
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focusing not now how about now we good we cool okay let's just cut
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back sorry guys my lens is scratched and I'm too cheap to buy a new camera so
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there you go uh reset switch power switch hard drive LED and power LED and
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over here aha the coveted four front USB
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3.0 ports with microphone and headphones so this is cool I actually like top
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mounted IO I'm I I don't mind sort of
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front top mounted IO as well but one of the things that really bugs me about oh
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I went to look for my case but it's not there I've got a Tex station there one of thing that bugs me about my case is
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that the front USB is way down here which unless it's actually up on your
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desk is not very convenient although the flip side of that is that if you were to
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use a Raider on your desk you'd have a hard time reaching the front IO as well
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so this is more intended to be used uh as a case that is sitting on the
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floor next to you so this looks like it comes off but it's probably tied in some
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way on the inside so let's go ahead and open it up before we try to do
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that I guess we can look at the back while we're doing this
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so on the back we've got a 120 mil
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cooling fan we've got seven expansion slots and a bottom mounted power supply
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so all that's fairly straightforward you got your standard IO Shield remember
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when they used to include like a dummy one with cases I could never figure out
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why they did that because it's not like you know I would always try it with my
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motherboard be like oh I wonder if it works with my motherboard wouldn't that be crazy if it was actually the same
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layout as my motherboard this time and it never was not once Okay so we've
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taken off the side panels now uh which means that we can figure out why this
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won't move and the reason is aha that it comes pre cable tied down actually
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fairly tightly so um I don't know that
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we're actually going to undo that so let's just kind of peek under it so you
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can see here we've got support for uh-oh
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uh what's
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that we might rely on the box for this 3
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* 120 mm ah the cooling of this case is
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actually pretty cool give me a sec
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guys sorry guys so that's space for a 200 mil cooling fan up here in the
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top all right so that's pretty much it for what's going on down there we're
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just going to put that back on all right so let's have a look at the inside of
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the case so there's our four 5 and 1/4 in base it've got a really nice uh
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powder coating finish on the inside here this is actually better than some of the
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ones I've seen in the past very durable somewhat rough but check it out it
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doesn't Mark at all in spite of me trying to put fingerprints on it trying
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to scratch it up that is going to look really good in photos when you're
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showing off your system and it's going to look really good when you're like
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looking at your system even after you've built it because it won't have all those
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little marks and dings and scratches and fingerprints all over that is a
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fantastic powder coating finish they're using in here two 120 mm Spectre fans in
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the front so yes these are bit Phoenix Spectre fans these are not lowquality
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fans and considering the price of this case the fact that it comes with those
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fans is actually pretty darn impressive the included fan speed controller
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supports up to five fans which is uh probably about right once we flip it
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over to the other side I'll be able to know if it's exactly right and the power
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for it is right here in terms of cable routing room at the back you can see
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there's plenty of room here for a 24 pin cable as well as lots of different
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options for cable routing so you've got all your power supply cables can come
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out either here or here and then they can come back to plug into your video
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cards to plug into your optical drive to plug into your eight pin connector or
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any fans or whatever else you got on the top can all run through here they've got a nice wide Gap there just in case you
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have to run some random cable through here they've got a gap there as well
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I've had to do it so I'm glad it's there and that pretty much covers it so let's
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turn it around to the other side on the other side the case we've
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got our tool is 5 and a/4 in uh these don't move until you actually slide in
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the uh the drive itself so yeah not going to worry too much about that and
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then we've got tooless 3 and A2 in so you just take your oh it looks like
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check this out we happen to have a drive handy right now so all you got to do is
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pop it in there there you go you bend it out a
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little bit and then you pop it in there position these just right they are
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uh here they have rubber bits on them so they're going to be vibration dampening and then
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once you actually put the drive in it they have a lot less Flex to them
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they're fairly solid so you just throw that in there and it's not
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going anywhere I mean I wouldn't necessarily ship it like that if you're
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going to ship this system I would go ahead and put a screw in one of the
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provided screw mounts right here so they
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do give you the option for security or the option for convenience moving on
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we've got a aha there there they are there's our two usb3 front headers right
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now there aren't any motherboards I've seen that have two front usb3 headers
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but bit Fenix has also included in the accessory box which I was having trouble
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finding but have now found they do
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include an adapter to allow you to take one of those front USB 3 headers and
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turn it into a front USB 2 pinout so
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that will allow you to use the front pieces as USB 2 and USB 3 so that
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adapter is
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where' it go uhoh hold on a sec and we figured it out
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this is cool check this out so there's the USB 2 connector which you can you
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can hide the USB 3 connector back there and then just plug the USB 2 connector
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in where it goes or you can hide the USB 2 connector in the back obviously you'd
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be routing this from the back and plug the usb3 connector in so that's awesome
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so you have that option with both of them USB 2 or USB 3 for your front panel
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ports you just have to remember which is which once you've plugged them in front
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panel HD audio and check it out black
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down to the very end power switch reset switch power LED and hard drive LED
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front panel connectors very very nice
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okay what else we got in here that we're missing so there's a better look at that
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200 mil cooling fan spot up in the top there uh here is the third included
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Spectre fan okay we've got yeah seven
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PCI slots uh all with ventilation for
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additional well ventilation oh filtered intake for your power supply
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so there's your easy replace fan filter and unlike the 800d is probably the best
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example of this where it has that bottom fan filter that's three fan lengths long
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and unless your case happens to be like 6 ft away from the wall you can't
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actually pull it all the way out unlike that bit Fenix has implemented their
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other one as a side mounted or side removed fan filter so that means if you
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do put a fan here just for additional air flow into the case then you can use
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that to easily pull it out and clean it
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not the fan the filter that is so speaking of fan filters you can see this
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is sitting right on the floor so where would it get air flow from they include
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some little feet with uh sticky pads so you just stick those there and that's
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going to here you can probably see where that's coming through right there so you
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stick those there and that's going to give your case a little bit more elevation off of the floor you don't
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have to use them if you don't want but you do have the option all the included
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screws are in a little baggie that pretty much is expected and last but not
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least check this out you can install as long a graphics card as you could
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possibly want because with one two thumb screws you can remove the top three hard
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drive cages for up to 370 mm I think or 37 cm long graphics
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cards and I'm just going to double check
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that and I could be wrong 38 ha 38 cm
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long graphics card so I mean for context guys this is a 69 I'm coming back this
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is a 6990 so you you can install a graphics
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card up to that much longer than a 6990 so there you have it and you can still
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install three uh three drives in spite of that now the overall finish of the
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case is honestly really nice I never actually showed you guys the uh the
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build of the side panels so fairly unexceptional but given the price of the
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case it's not bad at all and then they're using their trademark soft touch
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feel on these accent pieces on the front
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of the case as well as on the top near the ports I do really like soft touch
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it's fairly fingerprint resistant feels very durable and looks really good so
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thank you for checking out my unboxing of the bit Phoenix Raider don't forget
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