Phanteks makes some excellent full towers, but has only more recently turned to small form factors, although the confusingly named MiniXL is hardly small, with dimensions more akin to a large midtower. What this space offers you,however, isn’tonly heaps of water-cooling support, but also the ability to house a second, full mini-ITX system inside with the purchase of a £23 upgrade kit.
The weighty Mini XL is definitely costly, but you get lots of high-quality metal for the money. It’s also aesthetically pleasing,with sand-blasted aluminium front and roof panels, and dual side windows. Meanwhile, its glossy trim section up and along the right houses LED strips, which can be toggled between one of ten colours using a button on the roof’s I/O panel.You can also buy extra LED strips to add internally, which will match the external colour.
There’s a vast number of fan mounts, most of which have elongated mounting holes, giving you some flexibility with regards to fan positions and radiator spacings. Three 140mm fans are supplied out of the box, and all intake areas are guarded by high-quality dust filters.
The side, front and roof panels all come away cleanly – you just need to disconnect the LED strip cable from the front panel. Modders will also appreciate the number of screws used – you won’t need a drill to remove the steel roof panel or optical drive cage, for example.
In fact, the design is well thought out everywhere, and each piece of hardware is very simple to install. There’s also plenty of room for CPU coolers and GPUs, while the five expansion slots mean that dual-slot cards can be used in the lowest slot of your micro-ATX motherboard.
For storage, there are two easily removable three-bay cages, along with two 2.5in brackets behind the motherboard tray, which can be relocated to be visible through the smaller window. You can also purchase extra 2.5in brackets, as well as 3.5in brackets (none is supplied) for mounting on the side and/or bottom of the optical drive cage.
The pre-routed, pre-connected cables are great too. Coupled with the Velcrocableties, numerous routing holes with secure rubber grommet sand ample space behind the motherboard, they make tidying the case a joy. The three fans come connected to the fantastic PWM fan hub, which will power and control the speed of up to 11 3-pin fans using just a SATA 12V connection and your motherboard’s 4-pin CPU fan header – a great system for unified fan control and easy cable management alike.
All that space inside is good news for water cooling. There’s 206 mm of roof clearance for 280mm and 360mm radiators, which can also be installed along the floor, albeit with less clearance and the need to remove the lower hard drive cage. If you remove both cages, 280mm radiators are supported in the front, or 240mm radiators in the side (using the supplied bracket), with lots of space for thick setups. Even the rear can house a 240mm or 280mm model thanks to the dual fan mounts. Phanteks includes a pump bracket, with a thick rubber base to dampen vibrations, and a reservoir bracket. For a better idea of the Mini XL’s flexibility, check out the video at http://tinyurl.com/CPCMiniXL
The options don’t end the reeither, as there’s also the ITX Upgrade Kit. With this kit, you replace the rear panel then install a secondary motherboard tray and a 5.25in bay module with front panel ports and buttons. It’s a fairly simple procedure, but a dual system isn’t without issues.
For example, you lose support for 140mm fans in the rear, so we moved ours to the roof asanexhaust above the mini-ITXsystem’s low-profile cooler. However, the ITX motherboard tray prevents 140mm fans from being properly used here, and we could only attach it on one side. Also, the second PSU must bean SFX model, and is installed on the floor, meaning it could easily conflict with your micro-ATX system’s expansion cards and CPU cooler, especially if the latter is a tower model, as with ours. We also had to swap the PSUs, running the micro-ATX rig off the SFX PSU, due to cable-length limitations. You need to consider which PSU is responsible for the LEDs, fan hub and, if you’re water cooling, your pump too. Using two systems in one case is cool, but it definitely requires some planning.
Performance
Cooling of the micro-ATX system is excellent. The lower section of the Mini XL has great front-to-back airflow, and both the CPU and GPU results are among the best we’ve seen, with the fans not spinning too loudly either. Adding the mini-ITX system to the thermal test at the same time has surprisingly little effect too; the CPU delta T increases by just 2°C, and although the GPU delta T goes up by 6°C, it’s also battling the SFX PSU for air.
Mini-ITX cooling isn’t great for the CPU, which get spretty toasty, since it receives little cool air–it all seem stobe sucked up by the graphics card, which actually does very well with a delta T of just 45°C; better than the Corsair 250D. However, turn on the micro-ATX system and it warms up by a massive 15°C, indicating that the larger system’s CPU cooler is stealing most of the air from the ITX graphics card, leaving even less air for the CPU, the temperature of which goes up by another 10°C. In fairness, there’s space for a larger CPU cooler than we used, but even so, the top part of the Mini XL is evidently a lot warmer than the bottom.
Conclusion
The Enthoo Mini XL is a unique case. If you can get all the power you need from a micro-ATX rig, then at £120 it would be a good match for a premium water-cooled system. It’s big, but an ATX machine with the same level of water cooling support would require even more space.
Being able to house two systems, while niche, is a good deal for £165, and while the mini-ITX system became hot, we were running both systems over clocked and under full CPU and GPU load, and neitheronethrottled, which is impressive with just three fans. With a little for ethought, you could use the Mini XL for many interesting projects. MATTHEW LAMBERT
SPECIFICATIONS
Dimensions (mm) 260x480x550 (WxDxH)
Material Aluminium, steel
Available colours Black
Weight 7kg
Front panel Power, reset, LED toggle, 2xUSB3, stereo, mic
Drive bays 3x external 5.25in, 6x internal 3.5in/2.5in, 2x internal 2.5in
Form factor(s) ‘Super Micro ATX’ (micro-ATX, mini-ITX, micro-ATX + mini-ITX via optional ITX Upgrade Kit)
Cooling 2x140mm/120mm front fan mounts (2x140mm fans included), 2x 140mm/120mm rear fan mounts (1x140mm fan included), 2x140mm or 3x120mm roof fan mounts, 2x140mm or 3x120mm bottom fan mounts, 2x 140mm/120mm side fan mounts, 2x120mm internal HDD fan mounts (fans not included)
CPU cooler clearance 215mm
Maximum graphics card length 290mm (410mm without HDD cage)
Extras Removable dust filters, external RGB LED lighting, PWM fan hub, pump bracket, reservoir bracket, radiator bracket