Phanteks Enthoo Primo Case Review
by Dustin Sklavos on August 10, 2013 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Water Cooling
- Phanteks
Phanteks gives the Enthoo Primo a unique advantage by allowing the motherboard's 4-pin PWM fan control to split off and control all the 3-pin fans in the enclosure (provided the motherboard itself can supply enough power to all of those fans); if you've been reading me for a while you know I'm a big advocate of fan control, and I'm very fond of this particular solution. It's a simple and fine-grained alternative.
The Enthoo Primo was tested at an ambient temperature of about 23C. The bay area has been unusually cool for these summer months, so I'm fairly certain we're going to have a punishingly hot Indian Summer soon.
The unique cooling design of the Enthoo Primo benefits from the bottom intake fan, but it's difficult for air from that intake, or from the front intakes, to make the journey to the CPU heatsink. You'll see this is a recurring theme with the Enthoo Primo; CPU cooling performance has been sacrificed for better GPU thermals.
Noise levels are outstanding for a case that has no acoustic padding. The split-PWM fan control definitely gets the job done.
Overclock the components, though, and the tradeoff becomes more pronounced. You get great GPU thermal performance, but the CPU suffers. This is a case that would probably benefit tremendously from a 280mm closed loop cooler mounted to the top as an intake. That in mind, I'm disinclined to ding Phanteks too much for their performance here.
Once again the Phanteks Enthoo Primo posts exemplary acoustic performance. Incredibly quiet at idle, reasonably quiet under load.
Full fat thermal testing continues to be unkind to the CPU, while the rest of the case's performance is still fairly competitive. The bottom GPU is going to get the lion's share of the cooling performance owing to the bottom intake.
Again, though, check out those noise levels. The Enthoo Primo is among the quietest cases we've tested when built to bear with the full fat testbed.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
42 Comments
View All Comments
Pooter - Sunday, August 11, 2013 - link
I understand that there's some validity to test the case out of the box in factory configuration... but do you not have watercooling equipment to test these obvious cases that are aimed at watercooling enthusiasts? Same goes for the 900d review. All the options that make this case exciting is simply glossed over if you're going to not play with all the fan/radiator/reservoir options.f0d - Sunday, August 11, 2013 - link
exactly.!if i diddnt have custom watercooling and a ton of hdd's and sli graphics cards there would be hundreds of other cases to choose from
these enthusiast cases really need to be tested with pumps radiators reservoirs and push/pull fans with multiple graphics cards and 8 or so hard drives
C.C. - Monday, August 12, 2013 - link
I have long hated this about Anandtech's otherwise great reviews..This case was made FOR WATERCOOLING. There is no other way to say it. You can install 5 different radiators if you choose, depending on your needs. Yet you guys can't afford to take 10 minutes to at least toss in a freaking H100/H220 for the cpu at least? Seriously, stop slacking on this watercooling cases and test them the way they were meant to tested!lwatcdr - Sunday, August 11, 2013 - link
I am so sick of black. Yes Black goes with everything but why not Red, Blue, Green, Orange, and Yellow cases? At this point I would even praise White, grey, and gunmetal.JamesWoods - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
They sell this thing called paint...and you call yourself an enthusiast. Where's the enthusiasm in DIY?waldojim42 - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
Can you not paint?I have painted more than one at this point, it really isn't all that hard. And you get exactly what you want!
Ilias78 - Sunday, August 11, 2013 - link
I just found my new case. Thanks Dustin.adriangb - Sunday, August 11, 2013 - link
I like how the fan controller works. I've always thought it cool to split a MB PWM into multiple fans. It would also be nice to 'digitalize' it, i.e read just the load and then set a specific RPM for what the MB demands, some MB don't have very good PWM.InfiniteImp - Sunday, August 11, 2013 - link
Excellent review - thanks for this. Since I plan on a liquid cooling setup, looks like the case's one shortcoming (CPU temps) should not affect me. Can't wait to see this in Canada. This will be a worth replacement for my old faithful HAF X. Now I just need to find someone who plans to stock it!toyotabedzrock - Monday, August 12, 2013 - link
Can someone tell me why case designers have not run premade custom flat wires for every fan slot and drive slot by now? For that matter most motherboards have almost identical placement of their power connectors and the gpu power plugs are all around the same area as well.There is no excuse for the mess. We have had the atx standard for a decade.