Bitfenix Ghost Quiet Gaming Computer Case Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
2,486 words · ~12 min read
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Welcome to my unboxing of the Bit Phoenix
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Ghost. The funny thing about this ghost is that you can see
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it.
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Whoa. Uh, anyway, let's let's have a look at what
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Bit Phoenix has to say for themselves about the Ghost. made of steel and
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plastic. It's an ATX form factor case. Includes some cooling fans, which happen
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to be Spectre fans, and it fits a 240
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millimeter radiator on top. Uses a nano chrome surface treatment. I'm very
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excited to see that. S4 hot swap and storage. Cool. Okay. Two USB 3 super
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speed ports. Silencing material. Ultra silent 120 mm Spectre fans included.
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Pre-moded for alchemy LED strips. Now, that's cool. Fits long graphics cards
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and has a dual hinge door design. Now, alchemy LED strips are actually like the
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balling outest case lighting that you can get these days because unlike
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cathodes, which have bulky inverters that go with them and they're heavy,
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they're hard to mount. They fall off all the time. Unlike those solutions, LED
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strips, uh, specters namely or specters,
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those are the fans, alchemies, namely are lightweight. They come with a really
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high quality 3M adhesive on them so they don't fall off and they don't need an
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inverter. They can plug directly into your power supply and you can even daisy
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chain multiple ones together in order to
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get very even lighting throughout your
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case. Now, it uses a hard foam, which I'm going to criticize right off the bat
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because things like this happen. However, it remains to be seen if the
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case managed to survive its transport or
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whether it did not. So, if it didn't manage to survive,
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then uh I guess I'll have to find another one and redo this unboxing. But,
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uh
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okay. Oh, custom foam though. So, let's go ahead and peel off
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the plastic. I'm not sure if you guys are even going to be able to hear me because we're using the uh we're using
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the NCIX TechTips camera today with the
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microphone. So, I don't know how much interference it's picking up from things
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like the uh the Oh, this is this is kind
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of funny. Uh, one of them's popped out and one of them's in. So, when I push on
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it Oh, never mind. It came came this time. Last time the two ones swapped
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which one was engaged and which one wasn't. So, this is What the heck? Oh,
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cool. So, there's a hot swap here for um
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Hold on a sec. That's cool. So, you can put a 2 and 1/2 in or a three and a half
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inch drive in here. And it has little rubber strips on the bottom which will a
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protect the PCB on the bottom of the hard drive and b it will actually reduce
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vibrations which can again cause damage to the hard drive or the data on it and
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will cause it to be loud. So I've gone and retrieved a hard drive which I will
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put in here like this and then I will slide like this and that's it. So it's a
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totally stealthy way to add an extra 3 and 1/2 in or 2 and 1/2 in drive to your
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system. Okay, line of seal of approval on that idea because I've seen
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implementations of hot swaps on cases that are terrible. See the uh DF85? Oh,
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just awful. Okay, so let's have a look at this filtered good. Less relevant
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though for a top uh top intake or exhaust because uh usually you want that
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to be exhaust. Heat does tend to rise. You've got lots of different options for
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fans here. So you can do 140. This looks like almost This looks like either a 160
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or a 140 or something. I don't know what this is, but it's it's bigger. It's
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bigger than normal. It looks like they've actually put in mounting holes
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for Oh, they've given Okay, so they've given you a lot of different options,
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but the 120s are offset. And this is really smart because it allows you to
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install a dual radiator sort of up here and then the fans on the bottom. So, it
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doesn't actually take up any space away from where you need, you know, your
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motherboard or your or your CPU uh for or your CPU block to be. And
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um that's important because a lot of cases have room for for dual fans, but
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as soon as you try to stack a radiator and fans, it gets pretty thick and it'll
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interfere with things like the MOSFET coolers on your motherboard or your CPU
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heat sink or whatever else you have there. So, they've got this compartment up here so you can store the radiator
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away. And you can see they've cut out the ends here, which leaves room for the
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barbs and the tubing to come out of the radiator. Although, usually I'd probably
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orient it the other way cuz otherwise this fan might get in the way depending
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on it might it might fit. It might just make it. Okay, so let's go ahead and Oh.
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Oh. Oh, okay. It looks like it didn't quite make the air shipment unscathed
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all the way from Asia to here. So, it looks like one of these uh one of these
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thumb screws got whacked and dented the back of the side panel a little bit. I'd
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say that's fairly minor as far as things being air air shipped across the ocean
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go. Um, so yeah, I've seen I've seen
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much worse. There's our sound dampening material on the inside. Gives some
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rigidity to the side panel that it otherwise wouldn't necessarily have and
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looks good, sounds good. Neat. Okay, so side panel's off.
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Side panel is pretty plain. Uh, no ventilation holes or anything like that.
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With the Ghost, they're going for more of well, silence, as you may or may not
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have figured out based on the sound deadening material and the fact that it
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doesn't have uh, you know, room for a bunch of blowing fans over top of the
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video cards or anything like that on the inside. Uh, speaking of the inside, um,
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I haven't actually seen the inside yet, so let's go ahead and No, no, we're not
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done with the outside yet. Right here at the front, we've got our LEDs. So,
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there's your power and your hard drive, your front audio, your two USB 2, two
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USB 3 power and reset switches. nice and recessed so you won't accidentally hit
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that one. And the front features a dual hinge design. You got your bit Phoenix
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logo which I think looks pretty nice. So you can actually open it this way to
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find the 35 and 1/4 in and one 3 and 1/2 in bay. The filtered front intake quite
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solidly built too actually. Very nice. And a Bitfenix Spectre 120 mm fan with
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room for another one. This is smart. Haha. Check this out. Perforations in
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the hard drive cage. I have actually not seen this before, but you hear people
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complain that, you know, oh well, there's a fan here, but by the time you put hard drives in here, you're not even
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going to be able to push any air through it. Now, I mean, it might not be a lot,
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but it'll be more than most cases. Smart. Uh, yo, you can also see
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the ventilation. So, from this angle, I hope you can see through here where some
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of the air flow will actually be coming in to feed these front fans cuz
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otherwise they wouldn't be getting anything because the front of the case,
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again, more perforations here, is using
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sound deadening material and is completely flat. Oh, you're trying to see
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something. I don't know what he's trying to see. Probably the fan. Check this out, though. Bam. I
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don't know what just What was that? Give
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me a sec. So, cameraman's not sure why you would
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want to be able to open either side of a case. Um, personally, I'm not a huge fan
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of the whole double hinge design, although it's Oh, yeah. Right. I put the
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little thing back in here, so it's fine now. Um, but it's implemented better
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here than I've seen in the past and more durably in fact as well. But I there are
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still a couple things that I don't Oh, hold
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on. Oh, it locks or something. Okay,
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hold on. Okay, I get it now. Actually, this is smarter than I thought. Okay, so
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the other main case is the Corsair 550D.
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That one has a double hinge front panel and it's not that durable because it's
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permanently double hinged. This one is smarter because it allows you to put the
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case on either side you want. And then these pieces are actually for locking it
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to the particular orientation you want. So you can here. So without these pieces
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in it can be double hinged. Okay. And
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then if you take these pieces here and put them
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in then they are a lock and it will no
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longer Oops. If you can actually get
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them in. There we go. And it will no longer open on that side unless you
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force it like I did before thinking that it was just a double hinged case. So
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there you go. you guys won't make the same mistake as me. And let's just slide
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this back in. So, you can see some stuff did come unseated in shipping, but by
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and large, the case did make it to us. So, all right. So, that's uh that's
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pretty good. Okay. 1 2 3 4 5 6 seven uh
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PCI slots. So, you're not going to be fitting any XLATX motherboards, but you
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will fit, you know, your normal fullsize ATX, microATX, MITx, should you want to
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put one of those in here, but I don't see the point of that. If you have MITx,
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you should get a Bit Phoenix Prodigy instead, which is like the coolest case
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that everyone's excited about. Okay, on the bottom, you've got lots of intake
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options. You can either do 120 mil or 140 mm fan from the bottom using a
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filtered intake that apparently goes in
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from I have no idea how this uh how this
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gets in or out of here. Oh, it's magnetic. Baller. Okay, cool. There you
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go. Filtered intake. Bam. Um, and then
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lots of room for your power supply to intake air supports for your power
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supply if you have a longer power supply. You've got one, two, three,
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four, three and 1/2 in bays there. One, two, three dedicated 2 and 1/2 in SSD
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bays. Toolless 5 and 1/4 in bays. Lots
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of cable management holes and enough cable management room. Now, this isn't
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the most ample space I've seen in the back of a motherboard tray before, but
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it's about an inch. So, there is sufficient room to run a 24 pin cable
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without actually not being able to close the side panel, which is one of those
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things you run into, and it's very, very frustrating. So, I'm going to go ahead
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and have a look at what they've got for internal connectors. You can see most of
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them are black. However, the front panel connectors are colorcoded. I'm a big fan
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of all black internal connectors, but I'll give it a pass if most of them are
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black and then there's just a couple that aren't. So, you can see the SATA
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connector as well as the SATA power connector for that front SATA dock are
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both black. It's got proper internal USB
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3 pins, uh, pin header out,
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whatever plug, okay, for the internal header, plug for the internal header, as
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well as a USB 2 lead that comes off of it. So, you can even just cut this off
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if you're not going to use it. No big deal. All right. We've got a dedicated
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USB 2 lead for those USB 2 ports, front panel audio, as well as your front
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panel. Whoops. Your front panel connectors, which are all red and black. Now, that's odd. If you're going to
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color code them, color code them. And then, if you're not going to color code them, make them black. So, that would be
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my feedback. Two Spectre fans are included. The one in the front and the
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one in the back. Although, there is space for 1 2 3 4 5 six fans natively
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without any changes. whatsoever. Huge CPU cutout tray, so you'll be able to
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install your CPU cooler without removing the board from the case, and uh that'll
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save you some time. Lots of cable management holes. Let's have a look at
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what they've included in terms of the accessories here. So, here's your rubber
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grommets as well as all your screws, bunch of thumb screws, manual. Okay,
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here are your 2 and 1/2 in hard drive sleds or SSD, whichever you prefer. I
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mean, you could you can use Momentous XTs in a desktop system. No reason you
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can't. Very high performance solution. All right. And then there's your 3 and
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1/2 in drive sleds. It's an odd I I
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wonder if the production cases are going to come with these not pre-installed
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like this. I guess if it saves them a little bit of labor and doesn't actually
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take the end user very long to install, then it could be a benefit to
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everybody. But there you go. So those slide in just like that.
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And these ones can also support 2 and 12 in devices as well. So, you can see
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there's two and a half inch holes there and lots of room with the honeycomb design for cooling for the hard drives
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that are installed in them as well. So, thank you for checking out my unboxing
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and first look at the Bitfenix Ghost
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Quiet Computer Case. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more
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