Bitfenix Phenom Series Compact Computer Case Unboxing & Overview
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
2,101 words · ~10 min read
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the fractal designed toine R4 case gets featured on the wow build logs of the
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week section more than any other case click now to learn more about it I am
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going to spare you guys the unboxing portion of this unboxing because we have
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a lot to do it comes in a pretty decent dual layered box and has hard foam
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inside which normally bothers me more particularly with larger cases but with
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smaller cases it bothers me less because there's less concern that they're going
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to be extremely heavy and cause breakage when in shipping so this my friends is
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the bit Phoenix Phenom or Phenom or however you prefer to pronounce that
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word like the older AMD processors but
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these are all new sort of they're based
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very closely on the original bit Phoenix
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Prodigy but with a couple of upgrades that I personally think are very very
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nice so let's take the white one it's available in a variety colors just like
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The Prodigy and we're going to have black and white here in the Showcase and
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we've got a nice little bit Phoenix logo that to me is a lot more subtle than the
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one that was on the original Prodigy that really popped out of the front
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ventilation Wise It's also taken a bit of a Middle Road the original Prodigy
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had either like little tiny vents along the sides or it had a full mesh front
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well the Phenom or Phenom has reasonable size vents on the sides here and then it
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has a closed front just like the white version of The Prodigy that I think
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gives it a very sleek very classic look
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but doesn't compromise on cooling to nearly the same extent the white Prodigy
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did IO is still on the side wouldn't
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have minded seeing this move to the front or the top but every position has
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disadvantages like even on the top you know your cat can step under or whatever
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else I have had that happen so there you go uh neither of them are windowed
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variants you've got the same kinds of accents up here on the top that you've
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got on the side with little grills and then on the top of the case you've got
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that same removable fan girl that we saw on the Prodigy that gives you access to
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ah yes radiator support so you can check a dual 120 millimeter Radiator in there
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no problem which leads us to the back of
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the case so this is where not all phenoms are created equally there are
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two versions just like The Prodigy now where there's one that supports many ITX
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motherboards at most so that's the one right here on your left and there's one
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that supports microatx so that is four
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expansion slot motherboards as opposed to just one but compromises some of the
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other expandability with respect to drives and water cooling radiators and
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other stuff like that so let's break these babies open and compare them
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internally so I've loosened all the screws and it's time for the big reveal
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much like the original Prodigy the build quality is very solid nice strong side
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panels almost no flex to them whatsoever they've got some nice weight to them
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which unfortunately does make the cases a little bit heavier but what do you
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want you want it to be light you want it to be strong you want it to be cheap you
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know you got to make compromises somewhere all right so removing these
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side panels we are going to reveal a couple of things number one is the SSD
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mounts that are built into the sides here you can put two 2 and 1/2 in drives
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there no problem as well as all the interior I/O that USB 3.0 Port can be
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adapted to USB 2 there is an included adapter and there's a custom PCB here
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that handles all the io so we find the same thing on the other one and whoa
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everything else that's inside these cases looks pretty darn different and
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yet familiar so this one right here what
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do you recognize that from well that is the interior of the original bit Phoenix
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Prodigy so you've got fan mounts here at the front lots of room for intake
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whether you want to mount you know dual 120s or I think you actually have to
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remove the 5 and a/4 inch Bay but you can do that you just remove the front bezel and pull that off you can do dual
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12s for a radiator in there you can do you know 140s I believe it can do 160s
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Andor 180s there's lots of different options in there for fans in the front
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you've also got five expansion Bays here that are compatible with either 2 and
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1/2 in or 3 and 1/2 in drives a 5 and 1/4 in expansion Bay that can be used
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for something else should you so desire in fact it comes with a 3 and 1/2 in
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plastic adapter in it and that pretty much does it for this side a little bit
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of cable management room here and of course that attention to detail see the
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way that they folded over the metal here so it doesn't leave any sharp edges I'm
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going to go ahead and give you another angle on that that means you're not
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going to cut open the power supply cables that you're trying to run through
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here in Cable Management here which is good because it is an extremely tight
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fit for your power supply in this particular case they have a fan filter
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on the bottom of the Phenom that has the ITX layout because that is that means
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you are intended to install your power supply with the fan facing down so the
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heat doesn't interfere with any other components in your system and over here on the other side you find a little bit
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more room for cable management as well as ah yes if you were to remove and
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check this out all screws very few rivets on this case if you were to
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remove all your drive cages you could actually make room for radiators here at
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the front and you could just Mount Your 2 and 1/2 in ssds to the inside here you
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could Mount them to the other side of the power supply and motherboard tray
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enclosure and you could add ssds that way so you could throw four ssds in here
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having actually removed all of the drive cages giving you lots of room for water
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cooling it has support for a single 120 or 140 mm Fen in the back and two
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expansions which might seem weird because ITX only has one but that my
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friends is because you can install a dual slot graphics card without having
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to do any modding or anything like that so there you go that is the ITX Phenom
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or Phenom whichever you prefer now let's go through the
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matx Phenom or Phenom whichever you
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prefer so you can see right here that our 5 and a/4 inch uh sled seems to have
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been attached to here for some reason these are engineering samples so it's
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possible that the packaging wasn't quite final because I know for a fact that
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this box is supposed to be there and not this guy right here so this is a 5 and
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1/4 to 3 and 1/2 in or 2 and 1/2 in adapter just like we found in the other
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case and it can go up here in the 5 and 1/4 inch cage you also can install
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either using the Vib anti vibration mounts here 2 3 and 1/2 in or two 2 and
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1/2 in drives using the hooks as well as
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the uh oh looks like three ohuh my bad
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sorry about that so three 2 and 1/2 in drives if you prefer to go that rate
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using the hooks and the um screws right here you can also see that the fan
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layout is extremely different there's no power supply at the back so there's 120
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or 140 here five expansion slots which is great because some mini ATX boards
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even though they only have four slots have their full speed PCIe right on the
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bottom so if you want to put a graphics card in there running an SLI or Crossfire you're going to have to make
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use of that fifth slot great a bit Phoenix to think of this your eye your
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toolless removal of these slot hold Downs as well as oh yeah there's a power
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in but hold on a second where does that go okay it goes here so there's an
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extension cable here that actually runs to the power supply which is boom on the
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bottom of the case so that means these feet are important you're going to be
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taking up air into the bottom of the case this heat shield is for use if you
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install hard drives as opposed to fans in the bottom here although I personally
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uh don't anticipate that that'll make much of a practical difference to the
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performance of the uh of the you know cooling those drives or anything like
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that the rest of the Interior is pretty straightforward so you can find your
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matx motherboard tray over here Cable Management should be relatively
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straightforward in here and you should be able to hide most of it either up
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here in the top in the 5 and a/4 inch Bay that you're unlikely to be using
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because whoa there is no 5 and 1/4 inch
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FR ha so guys remember the 5 and 1/4 in
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Bay internally is because a lot of these components have a lot of the design has
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been reused from The Prodigy so you're really meant to just install drives with
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the adapters so you can see your so you can hide all your cables over here your
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natx motherboard tray is reasonably strong considering that it has an
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extremely large CPU cutout again with that folded over metal so you're not
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going to accidentally cut anything on it you can also install more drives so
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there's anti vibration mounts here as well as more fans down in the bottom of
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the case should you see fit so you can put dual 120s down there it should be
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noted that the water cooling options are not near as extensive for the matx
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version and if you wanted to install a dual 140 mm rat in the top while you
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could you would be a little bit Limited in terms of which expansion slots you
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can use because there would be some interference there so if you really want
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to fill it full of water cooling radiators you might want to go with the mitx version you can of course still
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install a single 120 mm radiator at the back without any difficulty I think that
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pretty much covers it other than the accessories that are included and I can tell you what's in here before I even
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open it so there's a USB 3 to USB 2 adapter for the built-in IO and there's
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a bunch of screws and some cable ties don't forget to subscribe to L Texs from
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comment if you thought it was kind of weird that I unboxed two different
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colors of two different cases within the same video and if you're okay with it
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let me know if you weren't okay with it then let me know about that too check
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completely lost track of what I've said and haven't said at this point so yeah