Okay so first off, I have quite the problem of constantly wanting to swap out of cases and different form factors of cases.
I finally decided this will be my final case for a good while until I decide that this build will meet its end.
I decided to go with the Phenteks Evolv ITX.
I really loved the Evolv mATX (especially with it being a beautiful white case) but still wanted something smaller.
Second: The Previous case I had was an NZXT Source 210, mind you it was a great case for first time build in a lower budget, but had some major drawbacks.
One major being that it lacked proper ventilation for the two 120mm fans to be installed and the honeycomb grate made the fans at least 2 times as loud. I had cut out an opening for the fans and put some low density foam to block dust.
Quite dirty at this point. I live in a Semi-Arid climate so dust is very common.
Here is just an internal view of what the last build was
Close up of all the dust:
Now onto the Case, The Phanteks Evolv ITX. I have loved Phanteks products ever since I first discovered them after @MisteryAngel mentioned them.
Pretty standard hard foam shipping material.
Here is just a few shots of the case bare. Sorry for the noise and terrible exposure.
Top/front View with the 2 USB 3.0 headphone/Mic-In, Reset and Power button which if flush with the case on top.
Just some internal shots:
Bottom PSU fan filter which is kind of hard to remove.
To be honest, building in this case was not easy and I ran into a few problems:
First off, the orientation of my CPU cooler had to be change many times and lead to a lot of tinkering and re-applying thermal paste probably 10 times.
Eventually I had to come to terms with it and remove my heat spreaders on the 8GB kit of RAM.
It was quite easy as I left it out in the sun to let the sticky double sided strips become weaker, but in while I was walking out, a single stick slipped out of my hand and dropped about 4ft onto the tile. It was an unfortunate event but the single stick had died. I tested it on multiple boards. I am hoping that some solder came loose and can easily be fixed by heating it with a heat gun or in the oven.
Here is the cooler just a few mm off of touching the RAM.
There is a whole lot of room behind the motherboard tray and beside the PSU. Also the large amount of rubber grommets makes the internals look very clean.
Front View:
It all sits nice together crammed in here, with some major adjustments to my liking.
Even though my R9 290 is able to fit in the case, once I powered it on, I heard some terrible grinding sounds. I knew immediately that it was the sound of a fan but took me a while to figure out which fan it was. Turns out it was the 1st and 3rd fan on my GPU.
In response to the sound, I had noticed some bezelled metal that was there to add rigidity to the cut outs below the motherboard. I had to bend them slightly so that the 1st fan would not grind. the 3rd fan was another issue since there was no way I was going to be able to lower that part of the metal with out some grinding of the case, which I did not want to do. I had grabbed some of that low density foam and folded it up to about half a centimeter that way it could raise that end of the GPU bit.
So if anyone has plans on the case make sure that your GPU is truly 2 PCI-E slots in width
I hope that this has no adverse affects in the future.
Overall. It was fun but fustrating to build in this case, perhaps it would have been much easier if I had much smaller hands.
Here is a final show with everything lit up.