Phanteks Enthoo Primo Ultimate Chassis Review and Build

LOOK AROUND Cont.

Side by side, one of the 2 bottom press and lock/unlock screen filter panels. Six thick rubber anti slip/vibration case feet pads are good for sound deadening too.

The right/back side panel vents have magnetic filters that are simple to remove and clean. The material is strong quality made filter screens. The forward vent is where the drive cages are or the 240mm or 140mm radiator and fans in any manner, push, pull or both can draw intake or exhaust. The rear vent with magnetic mesh filter is where the right/back side PSU choice would have it’s intake from.

There is so much here on the back side it’s a shame it gets hidden away and not seen.  Cable management might look good now but it will get a bit messier.  Velcro straps, zip tie standoffs, split pass thru grommets and one thing we’ll see later is the cable pass thru hidden slot with cover so even when done cable management can look like art. The Velcro cable ties shown here are attached with more supplied in the accessories bag. Center bottom is the pump mounting bracket and to the right is the right side PSU mounting area with anti-vibration sound proofing stand-offs. Dual drive bays for 6 HDD’s. Above the Drive bays are two Drop N Lock SSD mounts. Dead center is the PWM Hub and to the right of the PWM Hub is an optional Drop N Lock SSD mounting location. We’ll see more transformation of all this view soon.

The SSD Drop N Lock brackets are pretty cool and you get 2 included that allow piggy backing 2 SSD’s at a time per bracket.

The Drop N Lock brackets gives you the SSD alternative of mounting 2 in each bracket plus a 5th standalone in the 3rd SSD mount location on the back side of the MOBO tray and if you need a 6th SSD location you can use the bottom of the drive cage when you remove the cages as another SSD mount area. So if you like you can pull out the HDD drive cages and use that space for pumps and reservoirs and stash the SSD’s all over in ways that are not only convenient and innovative but fantastic for cable management.

The PWM FAN HUB is excellent. The PWM uses 1 Motherboard 4 pin PWM connection and supports SIX LED fan connections up to 11 fans. Fan #1 is the Master PWM and must remain solo but the other 5 connections can be split to support 11 fans in all running PWM. Two sleeved fan splitters are supplied. it has an additional 12V input power line that’s optional if using a heavy load but it’s suggested you connect it and not worry about your load. There is a 12V molex LED strip connector supporting strip/s up to 50 LEDS at <1A.

On the business side of the case where else does the company nameplate belong? Above that there are five bay mount locks, moving back you see the magical vertical cover with an second cover just behind the bay area, motherboard mounting area showing a huge rear access area allowing CPU cooling bracket mounting. There is rear and lower 140mm fan as standard equipment. The motherboard tray supports ATX, EATX, mATX, SSI EEB. Capable of eight expansion slots, 2 PSU locations, five 5 1/4 external bays, six internal (2x 3 HDD cages) or 12 (2x 3HDD cages + 2x doublestack SSD brackets some expandable to 3x and 2 additional SSD mounting locations back of drive bays.

The Front bay access door assembly is sturdy, insulated and built secured by a magnetic latching system.
The layers create another sound insulation, especially if you plan a bayres up front in any of the five 5 1/4 bay slots. I would of liked a 5 1/4 bay adapter for a 3 1/2 bay device option.

Standard equipment includes five Phanteks PH-F140SP 140mm fans, two upfront, one rear, one up top and another on the floor. They are 1200 +/- 250 rpm, 82.1 CFM 19 dB two have blue LED lighting. Without radiators there is room for 11 140mm fans or 16 120mm fans. If you push pull say 3 radiators, a 2 x 140, a 2 x 120 and a 4 x 120 you can could have a total of 24 fans possible.

The PSU options are two fold. Either left or right side mounts or even both. If choosing the left side there is two mounting pads included in the accessories box for insulation, anti-vibration and spacing. The right or back side selection has anti-vibration and thermal stand off pads.

The reservoir bracket / cable cover installed allows for a 257mm or 10.1″

My Sapphire HD 7970 is 12″ and I really like the reservoir bracket cover as it hides another 3/4″ of cables. The “cover” is made from a ABS type plastic and cut very easy so this was my solution instead of going without the cover. Without the cover you can fit a 277mm or 10.9″. Remove the reservoir bracket and you can fit a 350mm or 13.8″, Change the HDD cages to front position and you have 390mm or 15.35″ clearance and for that ultimate GPU remove the HDD cage you can fit 515mm or 20.27″ lengthier GPU’s.

This leads us to THE BUILD.