Phanteks Enthoo Primo Case Review
by Dustin Sklavos on August 10, 2013 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Water Cooling
- Phanteks
The Phanteks Enthoo Primo is, frankly, quite a case. At $249 it's definitely a luxury item, but I get the sense that Phanteks is following Corsair's lead in the enclosure market: start at the top and work your way down. You'll remember the Corsair 900D was warmly received, and the Phanteks Enthoo Primo is without a doubt going to earn a fairly healthy following.
Externally, this is definitely one of the more attractive cases I've tested. While I'm starting to feel a little bit of black box fatigue, there are clearly still ways to reinvent the wheel. There's a beautiful blue line of LEDs that lights up along the trim on the right side of the case when it's powered on, very subtle but very attractive, and if you don't like them you can just turn them off. Overall there's a lot of good geometry and fairly smart ventilation design.
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The internal design of the Enthoo Primo is a little trickier. I feel like Phanteks is on solid ground; the way the power supply bay is oriented and separated from the rest of the interior is smart, and there's plenty of space for routing cabling. The problem I think we run into is that the front intakes are somewhat obstructed, causing the Enthoo Primo to rely more on the bottom intake. That's not so bad, but the result is that the flow of air is a little awkward. The radiator plate is also a nice touch, but needed to be thought out just a bit better to accommodate the types of high end graphics cards that are likely to find their way into a case like this.
What are we left with? Excellent build quality, smart thermal-acoustic balance owing to the PWM-driven fan controller, good looks, esoteric design, and a high price tag. The Phanteks Enthoo Primo is a project case similar to the less expensive Corsair Carbide Air 540, but lends itself much more to watercooling. At the $249 price tag, you essentially place it as a less expensive alternative to the monstrous Corsair Obsidian 900D, and I think it compares very favorably in that respect. Unless you need fifteen hard drives, four graphics cards, and/or a dual-CPU motherboard, the Enthoo Primo is going to be a more ideal option.
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Alan G - Saturday, August 10, 2013 - link
+1 on the mini-ITX request; I'm starting on my third build with this size board because that's what my friends want. I'm not prepared to spend over $200 for a case like this one as it's truly overkill IMO. Even though the from panel is closed off, what does anyone need with 5 5.25" drive bays? For my photographer friends I don't even put card readers in these days because USB 3.0 readers are cheap and if a pin ever gets bent (and this does happen) they get a new one for $30 and the case doesn't have to be opened and things pulled apart and installed.I think there are just too many good alternatives to this case for less money.
BillyONeal - Saturday, August 10, 2013 - link
There need to be more mini-ITX cases worth reviewing for that :)Grok42 - Sunday, August 11, 2013 - link
The truth hurts. While there are some good mITX cases that haven't been reviewed, they aren't recent cases. I can understand not wanting to review a 2-year old design but I would still appreciate it.zero2dash - Saturday, August 10, 2013 - link
"Full ATX accounts for less than 5% of the tech enthusiast community now."I'd love to see the proof to back up that statement.
You can buy plenty of enthusiast mATX/ATX boards for nearly any price point; meanwhile, if you want an enthusiast ITX board, you're going to pay out the nose for it. You're also left with only a few decent cases that do a good enough job at cooling.
ITX works if you have minimal requirements on storage and are only running a single GPU.
f0d - Sunday, August 11, 2013 - link
where is the proof of "Full ATX accounts for less than 5% of the tech enthusiast community now." i know that personally i have only built 1 mini-itx vs about 15 full atx pc's in the last 3 years for friends/familyand that person is now getting me to build an ivy bridge-e full atx system when they come out
noeldillabough - Sunday, August 11, 2013 - link
Which board do you plan to use? I use a raid controller and a discrete sound card so features on board don't really matter to me but I want a stable board with good overclocking potential.Grok42 - Sunday, August 11, 2013 - link
My last build was mITX and I can't see every building anything larger than mATX going forward. The mITX case I chose holds 10 drives. You would be amazed how much space is saved by not having any 5.25" bays.All that said, I'm too would be surprised that only 5% of the market is full ATX case purely based on the quantity of cases available. I guess if we're at an inflection point where everyone is moving away from full ATX it's possible that only 5% bought full ATX in the past month of YTD?
Barbarossa - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
George from Corsair here. Full towers sell in larger numbers than Mini ITX. Look at all the ~$150+ cases that are selling now: NZXT Phantoms, Cooler Master Storm Troopers/Strykers, etc. Full towers are more popular than ever.Mini ITX is growing in popularity but among the "enthusiast" crowd, full towers have increased dramatically in market share in the last couple of years.
Mid Tower ATX is still 70-80% of the total market, with Mini ITX and Full Tower ATX growing and chipping away at the edges. The bell curve is flattening but it's still there.
f0d - Saturday, August 10, 2013 - link
too much plastic and not enough roomi prefer my 900D - im so happy with that case i cant imagine ever needing another case again
HisDivineOrder - Saturday, August 10, 2013 - link
Then the 950D hits and you suddenly awaken one day with the very real ability to imagine it.Take the Obsidian 900D and then make it a huge cube instead. Ba-bam. You can name your new monolith, "The Borg" and add custom Borg cube sound effects when it starts.
Resistance is futile.