Phanteks Enthoo Primo Case Review
by Dustin Sklavos on August 10, 2013 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Water Cooling
- Phanteks
For testing full ATX cases, we use the following standardized testbed in stock and overclocked configurations to get a feel for how well the case handles heat and noise.
| ATX Test Configuration | |
| CPU |
Intel Core i7-2700K (95W TDP, tested at stock speed and overclocked to 4.3GHz @ 1.38V) |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD4H |
| Graphics Card |
ASUS GeForce GTX 560 Ti DCII TOP (tested at stock speed and overclocked to 1GHz/overvolted to 1.13V) 2x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 in SLI (full fat testing only) |
| Memory | 2x2GB Crucial Ballistix Smart Tracer DDR3-1600 |
| Drives |
Kingston SSDNow V+ 100 64GB SSD Samsung 5.25" BD-ROM/DVDRW Drive 3x HGST DeskStar 3TB 7200-RPM HDD |
| CPU Cooler | Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo with Cooler Master ThermalFusion 400 |
| Power Supply | SilverStone Strider Plus 1000W 80 Plus Silver |
Each case is tested in a stock configuration and an overclocked configuration that generates substantially more heat (and thus may produce more noise). The system is powered on and left idle for fifteen minutes, the thermal and acoustic results recorded, and then stressed by running seven threads in Prime95 (in-place large FFTs) on the CPU and OC Scanner (maximum load) on the GPU. At the end of fiteen minutes, thermal and acoustic results are recorded. This is done for the stock settings and for the overclock, and if the enclosure has a fan controller, these tests are repeated for each setting. Ambient temperature is also measured after the fifteen idle minutes but before the stress test and used to calculate the final reported results.
For the "full fat" testbed, the GTX 560 Ti is swapped out for a pair of GTX 580s, and three hard disks are added to fill out the case.
Thank You!
Before moving on, we'd like to thank the following vendors for providing us with the hardware used in our testbed.
- Thank you to Puget Systems for providing us with the Intel Core i7-2700K.
- Thank you to Gigabyte for providing us with the GA-Z77X-UD4H motherboard.
- Thank you to Crucial for providing us with the Ballistix Smart Tracer memory.
- Thank you to Cooler Master for providing us with the Hyper 212 Evo heatsink and fan unit.
- Thank you to Kingston for providing us with the SSDNow V+ 100 SSD.
- Thank you to CyberPower for providing us with the Samsung BD-ROM/DVD+/-RW drive.
- Thank you to HGST for providing us with the trio of hard drives.
- And thank you to SilverStone for providing us with the power supply.
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f0d - Sunday, August 11, 2013 - link
pre order placedAbot13 - Tuesday, August 13, 2013 - link
meh, just go to caselabs, resistance there is futile for sure, untill you realise that that kind of beauty costs.... still cheaper then a girlfriend though ;) (and depreciates less quickly too)Barbarossa - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
Haha, Obsidian 1080D.JamesWoods - Saturday, August 10, 2013 - link
Frankly, this case is not at all worth the cost when you can get a case to house your PC and do just fine for $40. Fools and their money are soon parted.zero2dash - Saturday, August 10, 2013 - link
Having owned several high dollar cases (including a LL PC-V1000BW Plus II and a SS FT02), it's all in what you prioritize.That being said - at this point, I'd rather stick with <$100 cases (ideally <$75) and spend the extra money on more RAM, a better GPU, or a bigger SSD, which is precisely what I've been doing the last few years.
noeldillabough - Sunday, August 11, 2013 - link
Buying an expensive case will last you a long time, compare that to say your sli videocards that are crap in a couple of years. The worst possible investment is computer hardware; doesn't stop me from wanting the latest!Ilias78 - Sunday, August 11, 2013 - link
40$ with horrible cable management, acoustics, airflow and ergonomics.Sure bro, whatever you say.
JamesWoods - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
llias78 - Horrible? Apparently you haven't been shopping in awhile. There are $40 cases now that have fantastic cable management. Maybe you just suck at building PCs. Cable management isn't some big mystery. Personally, I prefer to spend the extra cash on quiet fans and still have some extra left over from what I save.noeldillabough - You don't sell your entire system...I find it's much better to do so. Remember the switch up from USB 2.0 to USB 3.0? It's easiest to just sell the entire system and build a new one than have to buy USB 3.0 PCI cards, or USB 3.0 connection boxes for your bay drives.
waldojim42 - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
While cheap cases do work, and I still own some that are 10+ years old, I actually don't like working with them the way I do my more expensive cases. The Antec 1200 for example, has enough room that I can move things wherever I need them. So when I am running 4 video cards, I can move all my hard drives to the top of the case, and open up the air flow down below them. Something a $40 case simply won't allow.Also worth consideration, is the filtering. I live in a dusty environment (Texas), and am constantly cleaning my filters. Better filters than dead/overheating components in the case!
rpg1966 - Saturday, August 10, 2013 - link
Surely you can plot the temperature and noise levels on a single chart (temp on X, noise on Y, for example), to make the numbers understandable at a glance?