BitFenix Pandora Micro-ATX With ICON Display Review

Peter Donnell / 9 years ago

Final Thoughts

Pricing

There are a few variants of the BitFenix Pandora available, but they’re all rather well priced overall. You can expect to pay from £69.95 for the basic model, right up to £94.95 for the windowed and LCD equipped model.

Overview

I’ve been looking forward to reviewing this chassis ever since I saw it at Computex 2014. Fortunately for myself and no doubt BitFenix, the Pandora has exceeded my expectations in (almost) every respect. It’s unique in terms of design, it has some cool features and it’s overall rather cool.

The only issues I’ve had with this chassis are with cable management. In the end, I was able to get pretty reasonable results without too many headaches, but it really is tricky to keep the rear side panel in place. I’d ask that BitFenix throw that push-pin design in the bin and opt for some good old fashion screws. If I could change at least one thing, it would be making the chassis 10mm wider to allow even more cable routing space. However, it is what it is and with a little extra care, as well as carefully picking your PSU and cables to limit the excess, you’ll certainly net a great build without too many troubles along the way.

Build quality is very good overall, certainly helped along by those massive aluminium side panels which are both durable and great to look at. There’s filtered air intakes throughout and you get two good quality 120mm fans pre-installed. The side panel window is a nice feature, if you can afford to pay a little extra to get it. It offers a great view of the chassis interior and I really like the extra bit of window to show off your 2.5″ drive, which also does a great job of masking the cable shroud that it mounts upon.

The star of the show is the LCD display, it’s certainly unique and I’ve never seen another consumer ready chassis with one. Although I have seen some modders do something similar. It’s pretty simple to use and it’s a great way of customising your system, much like I did today with the #PCMR logo, although you can use any image you want; so long as it’s 240 x 320px.

Pros

Unique design
Built-in LCD logo display
Long GPU support
Cable shroud
240mm radiator support
2 x 120mm fans pre-installed

Cons

Screw on side panels would have been better
Cable routing can be tricky

“BitFenix have once again created a unique and innovative chassis that certainly stands out from the crowd. In terms of design it is fantastic to look at and while it’s not as practical as some other chassis solutions, it’s nice to see some new ideas on the market.”