BitFenix Ghost Case Review: Begging for the Premium Treatment
by Dustin Sklavos on November 10, 2012 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- bitfenix
- quiet
- ATX
Noise and Thermal Testing, Overclocked
Having been fairly underwhelmed with performance at stock settings, I experienced some trepidation when it came time to test the BitFenix Ghost under much more stressful circumstances. The essential problem is this: making tradeoffs for silence over performance mostly works out under more moderate loads, but high performance and/or overclocked hardware can stress the case's cooling enough to actually negate the sound dampening aspects of the design.
At the same time, I was also optimistic that the fans from be quiet! might acquit themselves better still under the overclocked settings.
There's no nice way to say it: without modified cooling, the BitFenix Ghost's thermal performance under our overclocked testbed is pretty poor. The Ghost needs additional airflow to get truly competitive thermals; the system didn't overheat the way Lian Li's PC-A55 did, but I'd still hesitate to call the thermals any more than "barely adequate" under this much stress.
Fan speeds tell the same story.
With all that in mind, the Ghost is at least successful in keeping noise levels down, but once again it's clear you really do need to add just the right amount of cooling to hit a sweet spot with this chassis design. Idle noise remains quite low, and adding some quiet fans can help bring load noise down substantially.
I'm of the opinion that while performance does improve noticeably with the door removed, the improvement isn't enough to make me suggest the case is being outright suffocated by keeping the door closed. It's a reduction in airflow to be sure, but not a catastrophic one. At the same time, it does negate the Ghost's primary reason for being: muffling noise.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
33 Comments
View All Comments
rickon66 - Saturday, November 10, 2012 - link
I too hate doors on cases. The Antec 1100 is still the overall cooling champ and it is almost as quiet while doing it with no door.IceClaec - Saturday, November 10, 2012 - link
According to NewEgg, it should be 8.27" x 20.55" x 20.08"Apetn - Saturday, November 10, 2012 - link
Last paragraph on 'noise and thermal testing, stock' you say addition of BitFenix fans when I'm pretty sure you added Be Quiet! fans.Grok42 - Saturday, November 10, 2012 - link
It seems that cases are stuck in the past and I'm losing hope that they will ever move forward. I'm not claiming Dustin shares my concerns but he certainly shared some level of frustration when he commented that it seems unbelievable that this is the first case he has seen to provide obvious and reasonable support for 2.5" drives. My big beef is why do I have to put up with all those useless 5.25" drives?Drop the external bays and you do lose the option to put a legacy optical drive inside your computer. However, so much else would be gained that it would easily offset this lose even for those few that still need an optical drive and have to use an external one.
Better cooling. 6-8 additional 3.5" or 2.5" bays. The case no longer needs a door improving cooling and cost. The width of the 5.25" drives to some degree define the width of the case which could now be narrower. Instead of adding additional 3.5" and 2.5" drives the entire case could get smaller.
Death666Angel - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
Narrower case -> you lose the ability to use the biggest, baddest tower coolers and/or you lose area behind the mainboard to route cablesAnd external 5.25" drive bays can be re purposed in tons of ways, I personally have a "ODD Slim Drive + 2.5" HDD + 2xUSB" adapter thing in one and a 6 x 2.5" HDD adapter in the other 5.25" bays of my TJ-08E. Since I don't use the internal 3.5" drive cage (wanted the space for my water cooling pump and reservoir), I now have easy access to all my hard drives and extra front USB ports. There are tons of adapters for multiple 3.5" HDDs in 5.25" bays with hot swap capabilities etc.
Grok42 - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
Completely agree that narrowing the case has downsides like you mentioned. The question is to what degree these would be problems. Given that every case I've seen is basically designed to be as wide as a 5.25" bay plus the thickness of 4 pieces of sheet metal I would guess that the depth is driven by the 5.25" bay and not so much on cooling and cable routing needs. The funny thing is that the 5.25" format was setup back before any processor needed active cooling much less tower coolers. I would add to your list of negative effects that it will make it less stable, although how much depends a lot on other decisions like where the PSU is located.I'm glad you've overcome your cases disability. Imagine how much easier and cheaper if the case had simply come with additional 2.5" and 3.5" bays instead? Of course I also am a huge fan of the bays being removable so the case can be worked on easier or for better airflow. Typically 5.25" bays are not removable because they are the width of the case and simply made structurally part of it.
Bonesdad - Saturday, November 10, 2012 - link
Nice review...love seeing cases like these. Something well built and nice clean lines with a more grown up look. What was that last horrid case reviewed here - Cougar Challenger? Stay far away from anything like that. Need more cases like this...cjs150 - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
"While neither drive cage is removable"Give me 5 mins with a dremel and a drill and I promise you they will be!
Very nice review, the case is not bad, just not good enough.
My main compliant is that the case designers are playing safe. With the exception of Lian Li nobody is really experimenting - the interior is the same as 5 years ago. In fact over the last 10 years the only noticeable change is moving the PSU from the top to the bottom.
Dustin Sklavos - Wednesday, November 14, 2012 - link
Have you not been paying attention to SilverStone?And Lian Li are much tamer than you'd like to think. They keep experimenting but most of the time they never actually fix the problems that have dogged most of their enclosures in my reviews: poor build quality, awkward drive mounts, and needlessly complicated assembly.
dingetje - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
Anyone have the Cooler Master HAF-XB ?