Hey guys, Jarrod here and today we’re going to take a look at the Enthoo Luxe case from
Phanteks.
I’ve bought this case for a server build, so let’s find out what it’s got to offer
and how it is to build in.
The case comes with a useful little plastic box containing all of the screws for the case,
which I found really helpful.
There are also some zip ties, and spare velcro cable ties.
The Enthoo Luxe is a full tower case which is 560mm in height (22in), 550mm depth (21.6in)
and 235mm in width (9.25in), so it’s not exactly small.
It’s quite heavy too, without anything installed it weighs in at 14KG or 30.8lb.
Let’s start with the outside of the case and work our way in.
The front is sandblasted aluminium with a matte black finish, with some air intakes
for the two included PH-F140 140mm fans behind it.
There’s a dust filter inside that can be removed from the bottom.
The front IO can be found by sliding up the top panel, from left to right there are two
USB 3.0 type A ports, two USB 2.0 type A ports, 3.5mm microphone and headphone jacks, power
reset button and a lighting button to change between the 10 available colours.
If you have additional Phanteks lighting strips the colours of these are also changed.
The lighting should be compatible with MSI’s mystic light sync, and ASUS’s aura sync.
While pressing the lighting button once changes the colour, holding it for two seconds will
change the effect between being statically lit up, breathing, and colour cycle effects.
The lighting can be turned off by holding the button in for a while, should you want
to do that for some reason, I mean come on, it looks pretty nice with the lights.
Underneath the IO there’s room for 3 5.25” optical drives if you’re still into those,
simply remove the front panels to get to them.
On the right side there’s nothing of interest, just a plain panel which is removed with two
thumbscrews toward the back.
On the back are 8 expansion slots and exhaust for the included 140mm fan.
On the bottom are some large feet, which keep the case elevated quite a lot, it will easily
be able to pull air in even on carpet.
The feet have rubber bases so the case should also not slide around, which is pretty unlikely
anyway given its weight.
There are two dust filters down here, one that slides out the front and the other which
slides out the back.
On top towards the front is the power button to turn the system on, it lights up to match
colour selected for the rest of the case.
There's another dust filter which can be removed simply by pressing down on it until it clicks
and then pulling it out.
There’s also one included 140mm fan with either room to add a second, or instead replace
it with up to 3 120mm fans.
Now let’s talk about the main feature here, the tempered glass panel on the left.
The panel opens up by unscrewing the two thumbscrews towards the front, I really like that the
screws have padding between the head of the screw and the glass so that they won't scratch
the glass, although to unscrew them you’ll probably get some finger marks on the glass
so keep a cloth handy to clean them.
There’s also a foam like padding between the case and where the glass rests to prevent
damage to the glass.
The glass panel swings out on hinges, and it can be fully removed by lifting it up off
of the hinges.
Over time I found the glass got a little dusty, nothing a regular quick wipe can’t fix.
The frame inside of the case is made out of steel and there’s enough space to accommodate
Mini ITX, Micro ATX, ATX, E-ATX and SSI EEB sized motherboards, you’ll just need to
unscrew the standoffs and move them around as required, by default they are pre-installed
for ATX.
I had to do this for my SSI EEB server board, some screws were harder than others and required
pliers which resulted in me accidentally scratching the paint a couple of times.
Not a big deal though, the motherboard will hide that!
There’s enough room for a graphics card 347mm (13.6in) in length or 472mm with a hard
drive cage removed.
There’s also room for a CPU cooler 193mm or 7.6” high.
You can optionally install a reservoir inside if you’re going to be water cooling, the
case includes optional reservoir and pump brackets if you’ll be going the water cooling
route.
There’s 65mm or 2.55in of clearance between the radiator and motherboard, and there’s
room for radiators along the top and front of the case.
If you are doing the water cooling thing, you can fit a 120mm radiator on the back,
a 120, 140, or 240mm on the bottom, a 120, 140, 240, 280, 360 or 420mm on the top, or
120, 140, or 240mm on the front.
Towards the right are two 2.5” drive bays which is where I mounted my SSD.
I routed the cables from the back through the front so that they appear hidden, which
I think looks pretty cool rather than having them going out the other way and being messy.
I had to remove one of the drive cages in order to do this as my cables weren’t that
long.
Towards the bottom is the power supply shroud which hides the PSU and associated cables.
It can be removed by first taking out the three thumbscrews on the back of the case
and then pulled out.
There’s room for a power supply 318mm or 12.5” in length, and then some additional
room for the cables.
On the other side there’s 27mm or 1” of space for cable management which I found very
useful when trying to hide my cables.
We can see many of the available holes for cable routing here, for the first time I think
I was actually able to do some neat cabling in this build.
I really liked the velcro cable ties, all of the cables that come with the case were
already neatly routed which really helped while building as they were easy to quickly
adjust as needed.
There are two more locations for mounting SSDs, however as there are only two brackets
included with the case you’d need to move the ones from the front to use them, but you
do have the option of having your SSDs on the back instead of the front.
The Phanteks PWM fan hub is also found on this side, basically you plug the 4-pin connector
from the hub into the CPU fan header of your motherboard so that all fans controlled by
the PWM hub can be managed automatically by the system.
There’s room for up to 6 fans on the hub, however all 4 included 140mm fans come plugged
into it so realistically there are 2 spare spots.
The hub also needs to be connected to a SATA power port from the PSU to function.
The six 3.5” drive bays are also accessible here by pushing the clips on the back of the
tray in and pulling them out, and we can also mount 2.5” drives in these if we want.
I didn’t need these in my build, and actually removed one of the drive cages which held
3 of these drive bays in favour of additional cable management space.
Each cage has 3 of the 6 drive bays, and they are removed by simply unscrewing the thumb
screws and pulling the cage out.
The case comes with a 5 year warranty, and at the time of writing cost $180 USD.
You can get basically the same case for about $30 cheaper with a plastic side panel rather
than glass, I went with the glass because, well, it just looks so good.
It also comes in two colours, either black or grey, as you’ve seen I’ve got the black
one here.
The main reason that I chose this case for my server build was that it was one of the
few available cases that actually support the SSI-EEB form factor, which is a server
sized motherboard.
I’m using the case to build a server, and I wanted it to look good in a PC case rather
than a boring traditional server case, which I think I’ve accomplished using the Enthoo
Luxe.
I’ll be doing a full video on the server build in future, so keep an eye out for that.
So what did you guys think of the Enthoo Luxe case from Phanteks?
While I think it’s a bit on the higher price side of things for a case, you’re definitely
getting lots of premium features here that you’d expect at this price point, there’s
so much you can customize.
Overall I found the case great to build in, there was heaps of room for me to comfortably
get everything done even with a larger server board, and I really love the “thumb screw
all the things” way of thinking.
I especially think the glass side panel looks awesome, and really lets you show off your
build.
Be sure to let me know your thoughts down in the comments, and leave a like on the video
if you found it useful.
Thanks for watching, and don’t forget to subscribe for future tech videos like this
one.