Review on Phanteks PH ES217E_AG Tempered Cooling Anthracite by Kevin Gray

Pros: + Amazingly easy assembly + Very small footprint (when stacked vertically) + Excellent choice of materials, steel for construction, thick aluminum side panels and tempered glass to see your details, everything in use plastic in all the right places + dust filters on all inputs and outputs + built in RGB wiring harness and controls + can support 2 120mm AiosCons - As with most Itx builds this case is extremely tight and definitely has the best Order of assembly - I imagine higher than reference cards would be difficult to install with 2 Aios. - sfx-l psus is sufficient but very tight - airflow is not a strong point here. You'll be fine with an AIO, but I'd recommend a fan-style heatsink or a hybrid GPU heatsink. - The CPU is very low. 82mm is listed, I'd say 85 from CPU to glass as Deepcool's captain probably won't fit - the horizontal adhesive feet definitely seem like an afterthought, although functional. local computer store and chose itx. Phanteks proved their quality with their p350x eclipse case which I bought earlier so I pulled this guy's trigger and have no regrets (except I wanted grey, not black and c'est la vie, gray wasn't back then available). I personally like the aesthetics of this case and the presentation of the equipment. Although the case is large by itx standards, no space has been wasted on components. The final weight is also reasonable at 25 pounds. Assembly was a fun task, from flipping the PCI bracket to expose the GPU to installing the specified GPU power connectors so they fit without bending. I had serious concerns that the Deepcool Captain Aio I received for this project wouldn't fit due to the tubing coming off the pump, but it hardly fits less than a millimeter to get rid of some of the frustrating aspects that no hard drive activity light. no reset switch or dedicated power supply for that matter (but to be honest, onboard RGB will do). but the controller won't sync to the motherboard, which can be annoying. Thermostats are acceptable, but only in this case. Both GPU and CPU use AIO, but the CPU peaks at 73.4*c at full load and the GPU stabilizes around 64. Due to the design, there is also turbulence in this case. So don't expect it to be quiet. it's not loud by any means, but it's also anything but quiet. Overall I am very happy with this case. It's not perfect, but phanteks supplies yet another product that I probably recommend enough to recommend an edit: As an update, I dropped this case due to noise. Thermal performance was okay, both the processor and graphics card stayed on the Aios, but the fans definitely need to work harder if you install more powerful hardware. I would probably recommend this with an APU and maybe a tuner or something on the back, it would be a nice and lovely HTPC but for gaming be prepared for increased noise, temperature drops or even both. When Fantex releases Air Panels, it's a godsend for thermals and even acoustics.