Bitfenix Prodigy M Compact Gaming Case Unboxing & Overview
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,913 words · ~9 min read
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adata xpg V2 memory kits are optimized for the latest Intel gaming platforms
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check the link in the video description for more details welcome to my unboxing
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and overview of the bit Phoenix Prodigy M now if you've already heard of The
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Prodigy then I won't need to explain to you what it is it is an mitx case that
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is pretty stylish has support for lots of Radiators and generally high
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performance hard Hardware in a relatively small form factor Now The
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Prodigy M was bit Phoenix's response to
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what was I guess sometimes a criticism of The Prodigy which was that for an ITX
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case that is a single expansion slot motherboard case um it really wasn't
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that small and bit Fenix kind of went well yeah but you can put a lot of other
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Hardware in there like you know radiators and a whack ton of hard drives
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and all that kind of cool stuff and users went well no we want something
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that's the size of the Prodigy that we can put an matx case in that is one with
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four expansion slots and that my friends
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is what we have here today this is The
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Prodigy M which from the outside looks basically the same as the original
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Prodigy so here on the front of the case you've got a nice uh open airflow Grill
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so you're going to be able to bring in fresh air you've got a 5 and 1/4 in
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Drive Bay right here you've got the sort of Mac Pro ES looking handles on the top
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that are made of what they call fiber Flex or something along those lines
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which is basically bit fenix's way of saying they're supposed to be flexible
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because a lot of people complained in the past about them bowing a little bit
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so they're like well that's that's by Design um on the side we've got power
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reset headphone microphone jacks as well as two USB 3.0 ports the finish it
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actually varies a fair bit so on the side panel here we've got a powdercoated
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black so that's a bit of a matte black actually looks quite nice it's got a bit
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of a shine to it then the plastic parts on the top use their soft touch feel so
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that's a soft touch plastic and then the grills themselves use a bit of a shinier
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paint finish on them compared to the rest of it at the back ey yes this is
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where we find the differences so we've got a 120 or 140 mm fan Mount Your IO a
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little bit of extra ventilation here toolless removal of the PCI Express
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covers so you just go ahead and undo this thumb screw right here lift the
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whole thing up and they're all going to come free so I don't really want to do
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that cuz it's really really easy to do that all right so this magnetic guy right here on the bottom is actually a
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heat shield which is I guess um okay so
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when you look at the bottom you find the first hint as to the unusual layout so
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there's your power supply in the front of the case on the bottom there's also
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mounting points for fans down here as well as anti vibration mounting points
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for 3 and 1/2 in hard drives so I guess the idea is if you fill the bottom with
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drives and you don't need those ventilation holes and you don't want the
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heat being exhausted by your power supply to to get your hard drives hot
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you might want to put this on I suspect in practice it's not going to make that
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much of a difference but hey you've got the option should you desire it you
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might have noticed we switched to a white Prodigy M case don't worry we have
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uh we have not done anything crazy voodoo magic wise we just happen to have
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a black one and a white one the last thing left over from the original
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Prodigy up here is the removable fan filter SLG Grill on the top that allows
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you to have access to the ah yes up to 240 mm slim radiator that can be
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installed on the top however it should be noted that that might interfere with some of your expandability and once you
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get it open that will become more apparent so we're going to open up the
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side that has the io on it uh Brandon actually asked me while we were unboxing
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it why the io's on the side and the answer is because on the original
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Prodigy design the entire front of the case was taken up by the 5 and a/4 in
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Bay and ventilation so oh yeah that's speaking of ventilation the white design
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just like on the original Prodigy doesn't have the vent holes whereas the
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black one does so because it's all taken up by ventilation the iio is moved to
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the side and because the Prodigy m is based very closely on the original
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Prodigy and it wasn't a complete redesign from the ground up well they
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reused that side placed IO so anyway
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because it reuses most of the design of the original Prodigy they weren't going
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to retool it for the io to not be on the side because some people actually like
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it so here on the side panel you see a couple of 2 and 1/2 in SSD mounts that
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you can actually Mount to these plastic ventilated grills right here and other
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than that that basically just comes off like that now now we see this is not the
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same case at all so the original Prodigy
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had the power supply mounted in the back The Prodigy M has the power come in the
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back but that is using an extension cable so you can see right here it's
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wired up internally that runs to the power supply position here in the front
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of the case so this will actually plug in directly to the power supply down
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here which will sit up here in the front also the motherboard tray which was
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horizontal in the original Prodigy has now been adjusted to be vertical so the
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motherboard is actually mounted here in an inverted position giving you five PCI
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expansion slots assuming that you don't use any of these are rather this 120 mm
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fan Mount over here which gives you a lot of flexibility because some matx
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cases even though they only have four slots by Design some of them put their
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second PCIe adex slot at the very bottom
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meaning that if you have two dual slot graphics cards in SLI or Crossfire
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having an extra external slot like this
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allows you to install an additional card such as a sound card in between them so
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I give uh bit Phoenix a lot of credit for thinking of that and then if you don't use it then you don't use it great
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install a fan there and don't worry about it all right so included as well
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we've got two bit Fenix 120 millimeter
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fans so one in the bottom down here
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meaning you're probably going to want to pull that heat shield out in the default configuration and one over here the case
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supports a total of four three and A4 3
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and 1/2 in drives or five 2 and 1/2 in
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drives and you can play around a fair bit with where they go so you can see
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there are Drive mounts here with the rubber vibration mounts are vibration
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mounts being for 3 and 1/2 in and these little hooks as well as these other ones
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over here being for 2 and 1/2 in drives as well as uh here we go we've got an
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accessory box um you can also support up to a 120
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mm single Radiator in the back of the case so that gives you a fair bit of
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liquid cooling flexibility although not to nearly the same degree as the
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original Prodigy because the motherboard wasn't taking up that much space in the
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original Prodigy which is part of why you weren't able to fit that much
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Hardware in it uh from a motherboard and graphics card perspective but you could
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do lots of liquid cooling stuff so there's a usb2 to usb3 adapter here so
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that allows you to take the usb3 ports plug them into a usb2 board and have
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them run in USB 2 mode as well as all the little Hardwares that you're going
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to need to install your system inside the case we're going to undo the thumb
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screws on the other side which will give us an even better look at the interior
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cable management is much better in The Prodigy M compared to the original
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prodigy which tended to be a bit of a challenge although because they never
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released a windowed version of it I guess it was just mostly for the OCD
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folks like myself who even cared uh the build quality is still very solid I mean
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The Prodigy is not a cheaply you know flimsy side panel built case which is
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great and Carries on here we also see it has an extremely large motherboard
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cutout so you're going to have no difficulty installing or uninstalling um
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backplate mounted CPU coolers without taking out your motherboard this also
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gives you another look at the front here so you can see that the front fan
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options have not necessarily been reduced on paper because you still got
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all these mounting holes but remember guys there's a power supply here so yeah
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that's that's that's not an option as much as it was before I would probably
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install the power supply pulling air through the front particularly if you
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get the Black version of the case which as I mentioned before has more
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ventilation due to those grills in the front so just like The Prodigy it's
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available in a variety of colors it's matx instead of ITX supports fewer
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drives but more expansion cards and basically it comes down to you what you
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want to go with if you want the most powerful small form factor build matx is
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the way to go because it allows you to get a rampage for Gene throw something
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like a 30 or 4930k or 4960x 6 core in
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there and have a very very powerful little box thank you for checking out
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this unboxing don't forget to like it if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment if you're not sure
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