Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ITX Case Review

Overview

 

Here at pcGameware we have only seen one case from manufacturer Phanteks and that case was the mightily impressive Phanteks Enthoo Luxe and that case was awarded a prestigious Platinum award! That was a big case too, although admittedly not as big as its bigger brother the Enthoo Primo. But today we will go from the sublime to the ridiculous as I take a look at Phanteks smallest (and cheapest!) case the Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ITX.

This particular version is the windowed version, the Enthoo Evolv ITX is also available without (here). This budget tower case is (obviously!) an ITX case and it features a metal (powder coated black) exterior, is equipped with a single 200mm fan, has support for water cooling and supports Graphics Cards up to 330mm in length and Power Supplies up to 212mm in length.

 

 

 

The Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ITX case came to pcG in a somewhat boring (but no doubt eco friendly) brown cardboard box. On the front of the box there’s a simple outline of the Enthoo Evolv and at the bottom we find the name. The back of the box features a useful exploded view of the Enthoo Evolv along with a list of features.

 

 

As you can see from the image above the Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ITX came well packaged with the case covered by a plastic bag and protected by hard foam bricks. Despite the box looking a little ragged, the contents were found to be in perfect order…

 

 

Within the box and within the case (cleverly held in a drive tray) we find the accessories box. Opening the box reveals a bag of screws and cable ties along with a Quick Installation Guide. Unfortunately it’s not up to the level of presentation of the Enthoo Luxe, but then again this is a budget option…

At the time of review, the Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ITX is available from Overclockers UK for approximately £55 and comes with an impressive 5 year warranty.

 

Specifications/Features

courtesy of Phanteks

* Additional details available here

 

First Impressions

 

 

First impressions of the Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ITX are pretty good, the Evolv is a good looking small case, with a nice sized window on the left. It’s actually quite a stealthy looking case, meaning that there’s few stand-out features other than the aggressive looking front panel. The size is good too (375(H)mm x 395 (D)mm x 230 (W)), it’s not too small as to make installation a nightmare, but big enough to house a substantial Gaming Rig. Let’s take a tour shall we…

 

 

The left side panel is dominated by the large perspex window in the centre, that’s specifically (and rather cleverly) shaped to hide certain components (PSU & HDDs) while showing off the rest of the system. The panel is made from steel and is removed by way of two thumb screws that also feature rubber washers.

The right side of the case is simply a single steel panel (no window) and it is once again secured by two thumb screws with rubber washers.

 

 

The top of the Phanteks Enthoo Evolv has single steel panel with a smart looking (non illumining) power button near the front. On the edges of the panel there are vents allowing the top of the case to breathe. This is necessary should you decide to fit a radiator and/or fans in the top of the case.

The bottom of the Enthoo Evolv effectively has two large feet, one at the front and one at the back. Each corner in turn has a foam sole to stop the case moving around. This raises the Evolv off the desk surface by approximately 20mm, this allows your PSU to pull in cool air from beneath the case and through the rear mounted PSU filer. The filter can be easily removed for cleaning by simply pulling it out.

 

 

The front of the Phanteks Enthoo Evolv is the most dramatic bit of the case’s design, it’s a welcome sight though as it helps to break up what would otherwise be a monolithic black box. The panel also lets cool air in through the front (sides and bottom) of the case to feed the 200mm fan behind. At the very top there’s a drive light indicator on the right (that also cleverly houses the Reset button), followed by the following: USB 3.0, Headphone, Microphone & USB 3.0. The panel itself has a steel front fascia that is supported by a plastic frame.

Pulling at the bottom of the panel allows the front panel to be removed providing access to the filter behind. This also simply pulls away from the main case chassis. Now that with the front panel removed we can see the single angled LED that illuminates the power light at the base of the front panel.

The 200mm fan behind the filter appears to be a Phanteks fan and has a rotational speed of 800RPM. That may sound low but considering the fan’s size it’s still capable of shifting a fair amount of air. Should you wish the 200mm fan can be swapped out for x2 120mm or x2 140mm fans.

 

 

Looking at the back of the Enthoo Evolv ITX we can see the main I/O shield cutout on the left with a fan mount to the right. Note that no fan is supplied, although up to a 140mm is supported. Personally I think this is s a little poor (in fact it’s silly!), although I guess it’s easy enough to add one… Below this we can see that the Evolv ITX has two PCI slots below which we find the Power Supply cutout, note that according to Phanteks there’s enough room in the Evolv ITX to accommodate a 212mm long PSU, although I’m not so sure… 😉

As you can see from the image above right the PSU mount features 4 foam feet to help keep noise/vibration down, while below you can see the PSU filter that pulls out at the back of the case.

 

 

Removing the right side panel (by way of two thumb screws) allows us to see into the back of the Enthoo Evolv ITX. What’s surprising at first is that there’s a nice lot of room back here for cable management (according to Phanteks there’s 28mm). We also find Phantek’s trademark Velcro ties to help keep all of those cables in check! Over on the right we have the main motherboard area (inc an all important cutout at the top) with the PSU cutout below. In the top left corner there’s a smart/clever SSD mount and bracket, surrounded by some nice sturdy grommeted holes. In the bottom left there’s a drive cage with support for up to two drives (HDDs and SSDs are both supported).

Removing the left side panel allows us to see into the main interior of the Enthoo Evolv ITX for the first time. Note the main bay at the bottom of the case that covers the drive cage, and also the rather odd looking shroud above (with the Phanteks logo). There appears to be plenty of room in here, but what’s unusual is that the MB sits on the side of the case (vertical) and not on the floor (horizontal) as is often found with MITX cases. This means that the Graphics Card will be very close to the upper floor (PSU shroud) of the case and this gives me cause for concern…

 

 

In the image above left we can see another one of those clever 2.5″/SSD drive mounts atop the GPU shroud, although HDDs are also supported by way of simple screws. Unfortunately there’s only one bracket supplied!

The shroud itself can be removed by way of four thumb screws, two at the front and two at the back. The benefit of this is (most importantly) so you can get that extra long Graphics Card installed and secondly (once reinstalled) it covers up the drive cage below and the unsightly cabling for the GPU, clever eh! According to Phanteks the Enthoo Evolv ITX supports Graphics Cards up to 330mm in length.

 

 

Now one of the things that may come as a shock is that the Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ITX also has support for water cooling, and not just by attaching a 120/140mm AIO to the back of the case or a 120/240mm to the front of the case! The top of the case also has a rather clever bracket (that can be removed) that will support up to a 280mm radiator/fan assembly. The bracket is also offset allowing for better RAM clearance. Also that GPU shroud (mid-plate) found in the middle of the case is the perfect mount point for a reservoir/pump assembly. It’s also nice to see that a lot of the case can simply be broken down into panels thanks to the fact that Phantek’s have chosen to use screws and not rivets.

 

Hardware Installation

 

Test Rig Setup

Case	Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ITX	Power Supply	Corsair Professional Series AX760i
Motherboard	MSI Z97I Gaming AC	CPU	Intel Core i5-4690K
CPU Cooler	Noctua NH-U9S	RAM	HyperX Savage 2400MHz 8GB Kit
Graphics Card	XFX AMD Radeon R9 290X DD Black Edition	SSD	HyperX Fury 120GB

 

 

Installation into the Phanteks Enthoo Evolov ITX started with the PSU, that I thought might not of even fitted, but the 160mm long Corsair AX760i fitted with ease, although it can only be fitted through one side of the case. I’m still unconvinced though that there’s support for PSUs up to 212mm in length, which is Phanteks claim (so you may need to be careful!). To make things easier I also pre-fitted all of the cables that I was going to use. The PSU was then simply secured by the four screws provided.

Once the PSU was fitted I started on the motherboard assembly, normally this would consist of MB, CPU, CPU Cooler and RAM. But in this case (sorry no pun intended!) I decided to leave the CPU Cooler off as the Evolv ITX has a very large CPU cutout allowing me to fit the CPU Cooler after the MB is in place. The added benefit here is that it also gives me more room to work inside this small case during installation.

 

 

After the fitment of the I/O Shield the motherboard was secured in its vertical position by way of the four screws provided. With the MB in place I immediately started cabling up, as this was likely to be a little more awkward in this case due to the small confines. I first fitted the main 24-pin power cable, then the 8-pin, this was then followed by the rather awkward USB 3.0 cable (why these cables need to be so big, I just don’t know!). The final task was to fit the front panel cables, made all the more awkward by the silly position (just behind the 8-pin power socket) of the header on the MSI Z97I GAMING AC motherboard. The cable for the 200mm fan was also plugged into the only chassis fan header aboard the MSI MB, if you were to fit more fans I suggest that you’d want a fan controller of some kind.

As you can see (image above right) it all started to get a little cramped, but there was room in the only slot provided and it was lucky that there was no grommet too! Especially as I had yet to fit the SATA cables, that would also have to pass through this hole.

The next task was to fit the two drives (x1 SSD (HyperX Fury) and x1 HDD (Seagate ST2000DX001 2TB)), these were simply attached to the two drive sleds in the lower drive cage. There are of course two other SSD/2.5″ mounts, one the the top of the GPU shroud and one at the back of the case, but I choose to use the two sleds as I was really forced to use one of them for the HDD anyway! The HDD fits tool free and the SSD was screwed centrally by using the four screws provided. The drive sleds were slid into place and cabled up without issue. I even manged to squeeze the two SATA cables through that top motherboard tray cutout without too much of an issue, although it’s now getting a little tight. ooh er! 😉

 

 

No that the motherboard was in place and a good chunk of the cabling was done the Noctua NH-U9S CPU Cooler could be fitted. This Cooler is used in all of our ITX builds as it offers excellent compatibility with the 1st PCIe slot and RAM slots. I did note that our normal CPU Cooler (Raijintek Themis) would not fit, not due to the RAM or due to the height, but because the side of the cooler did indeed interfere with the PCIe slot. I was able to fit the Noctua NH-U9S without a problem though, helped by the large CPU cutout in the motherboard tray.

My attention then turned to the Graphics Card (XFX 290X DD Black Edition), the card fitted without issue, but as I mentioned earlier I have concerns about cooling as the bottom of the card is in close proximity to the top of the PSU shroud. Add to this the fact that there’s no fan supplied exhausting air from the case; I think our already toasty GPU is gonna get real toasty…

The last task saw me refit the rather unusual GPU shroud, that to all intents and purposes does very little if you’re mounting nothing to it! BUT, it sure as hell cleans up the aesthetics, helping to hide that often unsightly GPU power cable/s.

 

 

Now while the build took a while and required a little forethought overall build time was low (around an hour) and frustration levels were also kept in check, thanks to some good design choices by Phanteks; like the large CPU cutout, the 28mm of cable management room at the back of the case and well positioned cable management holes.

 

Testing Methodology/Setup

 

At pcGameware we use Prime95 and CoreTemp to evaluate CPU temperatures and we use MSI Afterburner to evaluate the GPU temperatures. Of course Prime95 being a CPU stress test also helps to generate heat for us to check the case thermals. We also use UNiGiNE Heaven 4.0 for GPU temperature testing.

CPU performance testing is carried out using Prime95 (Small FFT) to stress the CPU. Each run is timed for 15 mins and the maximum temperature is recorded for all cores and then the average core heat is taken. Testing was carried out with a small overclock on the i5-4690K of 4.0GHz courtesy of the MSI’s OC Genie.

GPU performance testing is carried out by running UNiGiNE Heaven 4.0 for 15 minutes and then by recording the maximum GPU temperature.

* All case fans (x1 in the case of the Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ITX) and the CPU Cooler (Noctua NH-U9S) are run at 100% throughout testing. To ascertain case noise levels, the GPU fans are set to their lowest setting and the CPU Cooler fan is unplugged, whilst the dB is recorded from 1m away.

 

Hardware Performance

 

 

CPU RESULTS – Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ITX with Noctua NH-U9S and Intel i5-4690K @ 4.0GHz

Case	Ambient Temperature	Max CPU Temperature (core average)	Delta Temperature
Cooltek W1	22.50	63.50	41.00
BitFenix Pandora	24.00	76.00	52.00
Fractal Design Core 1100	22.50	79.25	56.75
Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ITX	23.00	78.75	55.75
In Win 901	23.00	79.50	56.50

* Thermals Explained

 

The reason for the table above looking a little sparse is because of the unique configuration used when testing ITX cases. We have to swap out our regular ATX test MB and our regular Tower CPU Cooler for the MSI Z97I GAMING AC and the Noctua NH-U9S.

As I feared then! The lack of any air being exhausted from the Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ITX really hurts its CPU cooling ability. Recording the second worst Delta of 55.75 degrees Celsius, with an average Core temperature of almost 80 degrees. I really think shipping cases with no exhaust fan is a bad idea really, but what are we supposed to do as reviewers? If we added a fan, which one? And if we added a fan here, the what’s to stop us adding another fan (or two) in another case. The phrase ‘can of worms’ comes to mind, don’t go there James… 🙂

 

GPU RESULTS – Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ITX with XFX AMD Radeon R9 290X DD Black Edition – STOCK (Core: 1050MHz/ Mem: 5000MHz)

Case	Ambient Temperature	Max GPU Temperature	Delta Temperature
Cooltek W1	24.00	74.00	50.00
BitFenix Colossus Venom Window	22.00	73.00	51.00
Cooler Master HAF XB	24.00	80.00	56.00
BitFenix Aegis	23.50	81.00	57.50
NZXT S340	22.00	80.00	58.00
BitFenix Prodigy M	22.50	83.00	60.50
Xigmatek Aquila	23.50	84.00	60.50
BitFenix Pandora	24.00	87.00	63.00
In Win 901	22.50	89.00	66.50
Fractal Design Core 1100	24.00	94.00	70.00
BitFenix Phenom	22.00	94.00	72.00
Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ITX	23.00	95.00	72.00

 

OH DEAR! Now my worst fears have come true; as I expected the close proximity of the GPU to the upper PSU shroud and the lack of any exhaust fan has crippled our toasty XFX 290X as we near nuclear meltdown at 95 degrees Celsius (that’s hot folks, too hot!). At 95 degrees our test GPU is throttling constantly, although to be fair it’s hardly surprising, poor thing! As the Enthoo Evolv ITX (out of the box) is just not geared up to cool hot GPUs such as the AMD 290X. The answer is fit an exhaust fan, either in the back or at the top (maybe even both) or use a cooler Graphics Card perhaps…

 

Acoustic Performance

Of course this is an area where you would expect the Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ITX to perform well and it does. With a maximum noise output of 37dBA, the Evolv ITX is one quite case, thanks to that low RPM 200mm fan. But to celebrate this is to miss the point! This case if it is to be used for air cooling simply needs more fans, if the case is/was designed for water cooling why fit the 200mm fan in the first place!?

 

Final Thoughts

 

I have enjoyed my time with the Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ITX, it’s a well built, good looking case and installation was simple. But I’m unsure whether this case is for air cooling or water cooling, but either way it’s going to cost you more money…

The Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ITX (with side window) came to pcG in a standard brown cardboard box, the packaging was sufficient and everything arrived in perfect condition. Once out of the box it was easy to admire the simple (somewhat stealthy) design of the Enthoo Evolv ITX. It’s a simple black steel box with an aggressive front panel and a well placed large side window. Now while I understand that the Evolv ITX is a budget conscious case, I was a little disappointed with the accessories and the instructions (we’ve seen far better from Phanteks in the past).

The case is primarily made from steel and is screwed together which is always nice to see as the entire case can be broken down into panels. Fit and finish was also very good, but the omission of any kind of exhaust cooling I find a little shocking!

Installation of our Test Rig into the Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ITX was simple and straightforward thanks to a good internal layout (motherboard vertical) and plenty of cable management room (28mm at the rear) and cable management holes (with grommets). In fact I would say that the Evolv ITX is one of the easiest ITX installs that I have done. The only thing to watch is the order of the build; I found it best to install the PSU and cabling first and install the motherboard assembly (MB, CPU & RAM) without the CPU Cooler. The latter allowed for plenty of room to manoeuvre whilst cabling up.

The final build looks good too thanks to that well positioned side window and surprisingly that rather nifty GPU shroud, that helps to hide the Drive Cage beneath and the unsightly GPU power cables, clever!

Performance though is not the Phanteks Enthoo Evolv’s strong point though, putting in some of the worst thermal performance that we have seen here at pcG. This is of course down to the single 200mm 800RPM fan and the fact that there’s no exhaust fan fitted and the GPU is in very close proximity to the top of the PSU shroud! The latter caused our toasty XFX R9 290X to almost melt at a whopping 95 degrees Celsius!

This then is the ‘Achilles Heal’ of the Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ITX case as it, itself seems to be unsure whether it’s a case for air cooling or water cooling. The support for the latter is impressive though, with room for a 240mm radiator up front and/or a 280mm radiator in the roof, there’s even space at the back for a 140mm radiator/fan. The top of the GPU plate is also designed to house a pump/reservoir. All of this suggests that the Evolv may be a better for water cooling than for air cooling. But if you want to go the latter route you’ll need more fans, for sure…

The bottom line then; for approximately £55 the Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ITX (with window) is a damn good case and good value for money, but regardless of whether you go water cooling or air cooling is going to cost you more!

 

Verdict

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Many thanks to Phanteks for providing this sample for review