 So our tip starter campaign is in full swing. You guys have all contributed to help us move to a new office and take our production quality to the next level. But one of the reward tiers was that we would take our production quality right back to the original level with a classic retro unboxing here in the courtyard in front of the NCIX HQ. It has been years since we've done an outdoor unboxing in this particular location and we are going full freaking retro with the video experience today guys. That means, yeah, I haven't opened this before. All I have is a couple of handwritten notes on what also serves as a white balance card for our camera before we start filming. And we are jumping right into the Phanteks Enthoo Evolve, complete with cars driving around in the background, planes flying overhead. And it turning out that I actually only opened the first box. So we're going to roll the intro. We'll be back in a minute. Save on select Intel CPUs, NUCs and SSDs with special Black Friday rebates from select retailers. Click now to learn more. Alright, so here we go. This isn't the first Phanteks case we've checked out. The first one was actually the Enthoo Pro. And then we were going to do a review of the Enthoo Lux and then we realized, kind of halfway into doing the review, Luke was like, is this basically the same case that you just reviewed? And I kind of looked at it and went, yeah. So we emailed Phanteks and asked them, you know, what's the deal? Is this the same case? Well, basically, yeah, but it has like more options and accessories and stuff and like a nicer finish that Luke and I subjectively don't really, come on, think is that much nicer because, oh I see it. The old classic handles caught on the styrofoam. Luke and I don't really think like a glossy white plastic finish is really that much nicer or at all than what's on the Enthoo Pro in the first place. I'm going to have to hurt my fingers. Ow. Or I can reach it from the inside. Yes, much smarter. Pop that out. Then we will be able to get this bad boy out. Alright, so we'll, alright, see it's been a while since I've done this. So we'll start with the box. Now that it's out of the box. Appearance. Okay, I don't need to read about the appearance. Functionalities. It's got a drop and lock SSD brackets, tool, a side panel, a swing door, air cooling. Oh yeah, it supports that. Yeah, that's the one thing I did make notes about and I lost my notes. This really is turning into a classic Linus Tech Tips unboxing moment here, isn't it? So it supports up to a 280 millimeter in the top or 240 millimeter supports up to a 240 millimeter in the front or 140 millimeter. I'm talking like 120 versus 140 rad sizes and up to a 120 in the back or a 140 in the back. There's a picture of the case on the box if you care very much about that and all that radiator stuff that I had to do from memory is right there. Alright, so let's go ahead and find out what this bad boy is all about. Packing foam. Nothing special to be perfectly blunt. Although it is better than what Phanteks was doing on the Pro. I always talk about this, but it's worth repeating until manufacturers all start listening. New case manufacturers, they always make this mistake. They don't spend enough on the packing foam. They end up with a bunch of damaged cases and shipping. This is quite a bit better, but still a hard foam design because it is a more value oriented case. Excuse me, case. Alright, let's pull the plastic off the top and wow, the construction is actually really nice. So it's got a full aluminum outer body. So the top here is just like a bent. Here you can actually see the thickness of the aluminum here. This is like really spectacular. Even, oh no, those are plastic. Okay, so these bits are plastic here, but the top bit is aluminum here. There's a couple little ventilation holes in the top. Nothing spectacular. I would have preferred to see Phanteks use a more open mesh design here because based on just looking at the case, there's not going to be a ton of airflow. Although it's not like they intend for you to install, you know, triple R9 295 X2s in here. In fact, you wouldn't be able to do that because this is an MATX case. So we'll do the kind of the outside tour, I guess. At the front, you find no optical drives. This is a trend that we've started to see emerging, starting with the H440 from NZXT, where optical drives are just being completely thrown out the window. Even on larger MATX and ATX towers. But that's okay. You got your power LED presumably right here as well as a little bit of space for ventilation. More plastic pieces back here, but it really isn't noticeable. And the front aluminum finish is absolutely beautiful. I really like this. But anyway, Phanteks hasn't quite gone that route and they've still given you the optional option to have a 5.25 inch drive. You just put it on the back. I actually really like this option. Even though it's a little bit inconvenient to get at, especially if you have your tower like kind of on a desk or on the floor and right next to the wall like most people would, it's better than not having one at all. And it's more convenient than going and digging one out of a closet, even though it's less convenient than having it on the front. So I think this is actually not a bad balance. Also at the back here we've got that included 140mm rear fan, the four PCI slots that you get standard on an MATX board. You've also got some, I don't know, ventilation here. Rear mounted, bottom mounted power supply that has a filtered intake on the bottom. That's actually kind of hard to get at. That's a bit of a design problem right there. You're going to, I don't know, shave some of your fingernail off whenever you do that. This is aluminum too though. Really, really nice overall construction to this case. Alright, so let's go ahead and open this bad boy up shall we? I'll have to figure out how to do it. It's been a while since I've had to figure out how to open a case on camera. Okay, well, I still don't know. So anyway, there's a side panel window. Through the window you can see a little bit of your power supply. You can also see the shrouded basement as well as the sort of business side of the motherboard. So you'll be able to see your CPU area as well as your graphics card area. And, oh, hello. Front panel comes off just like that. So in here we find whatever this is. Oh, okay, so this is just like a light conduit thing for the LED that is going to illuminate that front power LED. That's actually kind of creative. Alright, and then here we'll find the just kind of jankily mounted LED in the middle of nowhere that's going to go ahead and illuminate that. We've also got an included what looks like a 200 millimeter fan with an easy to pop off and clean filter right there. And then access to the rest of the inside. So, okay, now I have to... oh, okay. This is another trend. I'm really not sure how I feel about this one. These push pins in order to open up side panels. So the first time we saw this was on the BitFenix... oh, balls. Now I forget what it's called. Well, whatever. On that BitFenix Pandora. That's right. On the BitFenix Pandora. And on that case, it didn't work very well because the balls and sockets were not of high enough quality to really close, especially given the cable management options in that case that didn't allow the cables to be laid flat enough. In here, I think it should be okay on this side, but we'll have to have a look at the other side to see how I feel about it over there. It worked really well on that Lee and Lee like console, killery, media sentry type tower that I looked at a little while ago. Fantex does a great job of their accessory boxes. So you've got a manual that is probably... actually, wow, wow. Not bad. Not bad at all. They've improved. Okay. And then you've got this handy dandy little tool box that has all your screws sorted according to their type, size, utility, however else you want to interpret that. You've also got some included brackets. This looks like a five and a quarter inch drive bracket. Or not. I don't know. And then you've got a couple... wow, a couple Velcro cable management ties, some zip ties as well as some... Oh, that's awesome. Look at that. That's why they have that janky mount on the LED in the front. Because you can change it out for whatever color you want. So I'm assuming that's blue up there right now. But they've also got white, green and red LEDs included. Oh no, that's white in there by default. This one is clearly labeled blue. Derp. All right. Then we've also got what appears to be an SSD mounting bracket in here. That's rubberized, so I don't know why it would need to be... okay, well, someone will tell me in the comments what this is. All right. So, screws to take out the drive mounts here. So this is cool. So you can actually mount your three and a half inch drives on these rubber grommets here. And then it looks like a variety of other drives along the rest of it. And I'm going to have to just kind of cheat here and go ahead and find out exactly how many drives fit in here. So internal three and a half, you can do three. Internal two and a half, you can do five. And it's one slot for upgrade, whatever the heck that means. All right. Rest of the internal layout, you can see the power supply down here is mounted on these foam bits right here. So you're not going to have to deal with any vibration that's passed from the power supply to the case unless it's at the back right here. Cable management is taken care of. You're just going to have to come around to the other side here, I think, because that's the only way we're going to get a look at this. All right. So cable management, okay, power reset and then front audio is over on the right. Really not a huge fan of side panel mounted front connectors, but I guess it's not the end of the world. I'm also really not sure how I feel about these swinging out doors. It's, you can really see the quality of the aluminum here. It's so nice and thick. Love this. But it's kind of a pain to take them off. You got to undo four screws to get them off if you want to lay your system down while you're building it. And you don't have, and you want to be able to move the case around. What is nice about it is that you can see the way they've designed the hinge would allow the case to be laid flat. And the panels just kind of open up against each other here. If you don't mind that, what I'd recommend doing is probably chucking a piece of foam between them if you're going to lay it down in order to work on it so that they don't bump up against each other. Conveniently, it includes a four-mention foam. All right. In here, we've got what they call, I think, drop-in lock. Don't quote me on that. But they've got what I think they call their drop-in lock SSD trays. So you go ahead and mount your SSDs in there. Or hard drives. They do include anti-vibration rubber mounts, even though SSDs don't need those. So if you want to do two and a half inch hard drives, it's all good. And then this is a really nice inclusion. They've got a PWM fan hub included, which is fantastic. So you actually power all the fans with, say, the 12-volt power input. It does say, okay, this is important. Please consult the manual before connecting this cable. That is a very, very important detail because depending on how you have things connected, blah, blah, blah, you may or may not need it, if I recall correctly. So this goes to the CPU fan header on the motherboard. That's important because a lot of motherboards have PWM connectors on the board that don't actually support PWM very correctly. But the CPU one always works correctly because Intel mandates how the CPU PWM header is supposed to work. Okay, other than that, cable management. Oh, down here, we've got a couple three and a half inch drive cages. So I actually like this system for three and a half inch drive mounting. The only thing I can see that I'm not a huge fan of here is cable management. So you're going to have to either take off that cover on the other side that keeps the inside looking clean in order to plug these in. Or you'll have to kind of reach down here and kind of reach through here in order to get the drive plugged in before you slide it all the way back. Because you're going to have to get power and data from the motherboard down there. There's not a ton of room for cable management, which is a bit of concern given that the side panel mounts on with push pins. But what Phanteks generally does a pretty good job of is cable management loop points here. So you can see you've got them here and they've got some nice included little Velcro ones as well. You've got a couple more here. You've got a couple more up here and then unfortunately not one up to the eight pin here, but it shouldn't matter because that should be about the only thing you're running up this way. So cable management grommets. I'm not really sure what else to say about it. This seems like a bit of a missed opportunity though right here. Oh, no, never mind. Actually, overall impressions, pretty good. Now I kind of wish I'd done a full review of it, but at this point it's not like we're going to redo it. Oh, this is cool. Check this out. So there's thumb screws. Wow, these side panels are kind of unwieldy. These thumb screws right here can be undone in order to... Oh, I just hit Ed in the face with a side panel. Those can be undone if you want. I don't actually know what exactly. Oh, okay, so you can pull that out. That'll help you install a radiator in the front. So if you want to pull that and the five and a quarter inch mounting out, or excuse me, three and a half inch drive bays out, then you can go ahead and do a radiator down the entire front of the case. And I guess if you also don't want to cable manage through the grommets for some reason, it would also help you with that. I do like this thoughtfully positioned cable management hole though. This will allow you to get at your front USB 2 or front USB 3, if that's on the bottom edge of the board. And I like this one as well because most boards have their front panel audio connector here, and most case manufacturers don't really consider this when they're putting in their cable management holes. So I think that pretty much wraps it up. Thank you for checking out my classic unboxing of the Enthoo Evolve. And speaking of classic things, okay, we have a sponsor today, and I'm going to justify this somehow because I don't know how many of you know this, but one of the first videos that I ever did on Linus Tech Tips, go look it up, is personal grooming tips. I had like a USB shaver. Well, I have since learned my lesson, and you know, if I have scuff like this these days, then the answer is, and I bet you guys all see this one coming, Lynda.com. No, DollarShaveClub.com. DollarShaveClub.com has a plane driving through it in the air. See, there's a plane up there. You'll find the plane. DollarShaveClub.com is the affordable way to get high quality razors delivered direct. 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