BitFenix Portal Mini-ITX Chassis Review

A Closer Look – Interior

Remove the two thumbscrews at the rear of the chassis, and the entire inner section slides out the rear! This is great, as it allows BitFenix to maintain that curvy and unbroken exterior design, while also making it much easier to install your hardware.

There’s a support rail below, so you can leave it hanging out the rear, but it’s best to lift it off completely so you don’t damage anything.

The rail isn’t screwed on anyway, and is more there to ease the reinstallation process.

All the front panel cables are mounted to the external panel, so don’t worry about them getting tangled up when you remove the internal section.

Internal Chassis

The inner section is really nicely designed, and being able to lift it away like this means you’ve got lots of elbow room to install your hardware with ease.

There’s a 120mm fan pre-installed in the rear. Of course, if you want to install a 120mm liquid cooler here, there’s going to be plenty of room to do so.

In the base, you’ll find two hard drive trays with support for either 3.5″ or 2.5″ drives. Of course, there’s also a dedicated 2.5″ bay on the top of those too, giving us three in total.

Almost the full length of the chassis is available to mount a graphics card. The Portal will support a dual-slot expansion card too, so most GPUs will fit just fine. Cable routing doesn’t really exist here though, but since the Window only shows the GPU, it almost doesn’t matter what’s hiding below it.