BitFenix Ghost Case Review: Begging for the Premium Treatment

Noise and Thermal Testing, Stock

Dealing with cases that are engineered specifically for silence as opposed to excelling in every metric (as larger, more expensive cases often are) means accepting potential trade-offs. The BitFenix Ghost, at $99, is geared more towards acoustic than thermal performance and unfortunately it shows. Yet there's at least potential in the Ghost for better performance, as most of the fan slots are vacant.

I don't like to make a habit of experimenting with cases because then I'll be expected to experiment with every single case that comes through here, and I just don't have time for that. However, the flexibility of the fan mounts in the Ghost make it a potentially ideal case for the roundup of closed-loop liquid coolers I'll be testing soon (particularly since NZXT has released a 140mm cooler and a 280mm cooler). More than that, I felt it was relevant to see if the closed door was suffocating the enclosure the way the one on the initial release of NZXT's H2 did.

Amusingly, the rep for be quiet! is actually my predecessor here for case reviews, and he was able to supply me with a healthy amount of fans for random testing. Their case fans are, I have to admit, really stellar. I'm using three of their 120mm fans in an FT03 for my media center, and for the Ghost I added their Silent Wings 2 140mm fan as an exhaust in the top of the case and a 120mm fan from the same line in the front as an intake.

California is becoming increasingly confused about the weather as we enter what Californians will call a freezing cold, rainy winter, and what people from states that have actual seasons will call "a bit nippy outside." The result is that there was a bit more variance in ambient temperatures when testing the Ghost, between 22C and 24C.

You can see stock performance is pretty underwhelming, but the pattern you see here is also one that will be consistent throughout testing: adding the fans takes a couple of degrees off the temperatures, and removing the front door takes another couple of degrees off. Unfortunately, only adding fans and removing the door is really enough to get it past the lower side of competitive in our stock configuration.

Again, fan speeds are on the lower side of competitive. It's not awful, but it's not very impressive either. I was a bit underwhelmed by Corsair's performance with their pricier 550D, and that feeling echoes in the BitFenix Ghost.

With all that said, the Ghost does achieve what it sets out to: it's one of the quietest cases we've tested, both at idle and under load. The addition of the be quiet! fans has the added bonus of reducing load noise and reducing temperatures. Chopping 1dB and 2-3C off of the system under load isn't necessarily a tremendous gain, but it does prove that there's room for improvement with the Ghost as well as being a ringing endorsement for the efficiency of be quiet!'s fans.