Phanteks Enthoo Luxe Elite Tempered Glass Chassis Review
Peter Donnell / 7 years ago
Introduction
Phanteks are well-known for creating many of the best chassis on the market today, such as their absolutely stunning Evolv ATX, which I still regard as one of the best chassis ever made. Today we’re taking a look at the latest entry in their Enthoo series, with the new Enthoo Luxe Tempered Glass Edition, which comes with (you guessed it!) a huge tempered glass side panel, a range of high-end features, new fans, it promises premium build quality, RGB lighting built-in and much more!
“The new Enthoo Luxe variant now introduces a full side tempered glass panel. The Enthoo Luxe features great build quality and a stylish RGB illumination. The innovative chassis design and sophisticated styling will make the Enthoo Luxe a must have among system builders.” – Phanteks
Features
Enthoo Luxe Tempered Glass edition includes 4x 140mm fans in total. Ability to upgrade to additional fans is possible. All fans included are Phanteks new redesigned and better performing premium fans.
Appearance:
- Sandblasted aluminium faceplates with matte finish with tempered glass panel
- Multi-color ambient lighting
- Stealth interior design
It’s certainly well equipped, with support for up to E-ATX motherboards, huge expansion cards, water cooling, lots of storage drives, as well four pre-installed fans.
A Closer Look – Interior
The Enthoo LUXE looks stunning from the moment you take it out of the box. There’s that lovely sandblasted aluminium finish on the exterior, which is complemented perfectly by a full-panel of tempered glass on the left side, which is going to be awesome for showing off your system build.
The front edge of the glass panel locked in place with a pair of aluminium thumb screws.
While the rear section has two small hinges, allowing you to open out the side panel with ease; don’t worry, you can lift it off the hinges to remove it completely if you need to.
The right side panel is just a solid black panel, but it’s big and heavy, and that will help reduce noise leakage and vibrations from the chassis.
The towering front panel looks stunning, with an I/O cover at the top, 3 x 5.25″ drive bays below that and a large air intake with a partially covered design to keep it looking neat and tidy.
This design allows for a less direct airflow pattern and will help reduce any unwanted noise from the fans without compromising on the airflow.
Flip up the I/O cover, and you’ll find a pair of USB 3.0, 2.0, and audio jacks, the reset button and the colour selector for the built-in LED lighting.
Around the back, things look pretty much as you would expect, with a fan mount at the top, eight expansion slots with ventilated and reusable covers, and the PSU mount at the bottom.
The top fan mount uses elongated screw mounts, so you can adjust the height of your fans or radiators for maximum compatibility.
There are some extra hardware mounts on the right side, perfect for some water cooling fittings.
And the PSU mount has a slide out dust filter at the back for easy maintenance.
The top panel has another filtered panel, and you just need to push it down at the back to unlock it, then lift it away for easy cleaning and installation of your cooling hardware.
There’s a large recess in the top panel, more than enough room for a rack of 120/140mm fans, and room for a full-length radiator too if you’re keen to water cool your system.
As if all those air filters and fan mounts weren’t enough, you’ll find the bottom of the chassis has two dust filters, giving us even more clean airflow.
The rear filter is for the PSU, while the front one covers another two 120/140mm fan/radiator mounts. For added stability, you’ll find six durable feet on the chassis, which give good ground clearance for your bottom air intakes too.
A Closer Look – Interior
Remove the two thumbscrews on the front edge of the side panel, and you can open it out like a door on the hinges. This is great for making quick changes to your system. If you need the panel out of the way, simply open it and lift it up off of the hinges.
With the side panel removed, you can see there’s quite a lot going on inside this chassis, with a huge amount of room for your hardware just waiting for your attention. There’s a large CPU mounting cut-out behind the motherboard, and there are cable routing grommets everywhere you could possibly need them too.
There a large PSU shroud that’ll help keep all your cable gore hidden out of sight, and a side mounted grommet for any expansion card power cables.
All of the expansion slots are fitted with reusable metal covers and thumb screws for easy installation/removal of your hardware.
All of the major motherboard stand-offs are pre-installed, which should greatly speed up your build time.
Tool-free quick release mounts for the 5.25″ drive bays.
Two vertically mounted 2.5″ HDD mounts on the front, so you can show them off through the glass side panel.
Around the back, thing are looking pretty busy, but there’s a lot of space here for cable routing, so you’ve nothing to worry about here.
There are four durable velcro cable ties to help strap down most of your cables, but also lots of cable tie loops available and cable ties included in the box to help you keep things neat and tidy.
With four pre-installed fans and a few more mounts beyond that, you’ll be happy to see this SATA powered fan hub at the back, making it nice and easy to keep all those fan cables away from your motherboard.
Remember those 2.5″ drive mounts around the front? You can pull them off their rubber keyhole mounts and move them around the back if you like, or you could buy two more trays from Phanteks are use both these two at the back, and the two at the front if you desire.
As if four SSD mounts weren’t enough, there are two removable hard drive cages, each with room for 3 x 2.5/3.5″ drives, giving us 10 HDD mounts in total.
Behind the front panel, two more of those lovely 140mm fans, and yet another removable dust filter!
Complete System
This system is huge, so fitting your components is going to be a pretty straight forward job. The design of the chassis is fantastic, with cable routing grommets everywhere you could need them, a huge PSU shroud, and lots of space behind the motherboard, so you’ll have virtually zero issues with getting great looking cable management.
The dedicated 2.5″ drive mounts are really cool, giving you a fun way to show off your new driver, opposed to just sticking them in a drive tray out of sight.
The chassis is nice and wide, so larger air coolers will fit with ease, and there’s a lot of clearance above the motherboard for a good sized radiator and fan configuration, as well as good clearance for the rear mount if you’re using a custop loop or AIO radiator there.
The Sapphire 270X Tri-X Toxic is massive, yet it has no issues fitting in here with room to spare. You can remove the HDD bays if you need to, but it’s unlikely that will be required for most builds.
Many graphics cards come with side-mounted PSU connectors, which often means trailing the PSU cable over or under the card. This chassis has a grommet on the side of the PSU shroud, allowing you to neatly run a cable right up to the graphics card with ease.
E-ATX motherboard support and 8 expansion slots is good news for those wanting a multi-GPU configuration, and the added width here will prove useful to those using wider GPUs and custom loop cooling hardware.
With the side panel back in place, you can see just how clear that glass is, showing off all the hardware very nicely against the black interior of the chassis.
That neat and tidy cable routing is paying off big time, with such an exposed view of the interior, it’s important to keep things tidy, as it’ll all be easily visible.
You can easily see the SSD through the glass too, and it’ll look even better if you throw in a bit of LED lighting.
Overall, this is one of the best looking chassis I’ve ever tested, and it’s not out of party tricky just yet either; let’s plug it in and start the light show!
The front and top panel each have recessed LED strip lighting on each side of the chassis. You can turn it off if you want, or you can cycle through a nice range of built-in colour modes using the button on the front I/O to suit your taste. A picture speakers a thousand words when it comes to showing off LED lighting, so get ready on your scroll wheel and enjoy the show!
Final Thoughts
Price
The Phanteks Enthoo Luxe Glass is available from Overclockers UK for £157.99, and it comes in two colours. There’s the black version which we reviewed today, and there’s a lovely gun-metal finish which I think looks even better than the black one! This obviously isn’t cheap, but for such a fantastic design and build quality, you certainly get what you pay for here.
Overview
Time and time again we’ve seen Phanteks deliver a truly staggering product for the high-end PC market, and today is certainly no exception. There’s not much in the way of innovation here, and Phanteks fans will certainly see a design that’s only slightly changed from generation to generation of this chassis series, but that doesn’t diminish from the fact this is one of the best cases they’ve ever made. Of course, the biggest changes here are the new and improved fans, as well as that huge slab of tempered glass on the left side of the chassis. Adding a glass panel is a nice trend at the moment and one I’m happy to see expanding throughout the market.
The build quality is up there with the best, and every little detail has been given love and attention. There hinges on the side panel window, the soft foam seal between the glass and the chassis, the sand blasted exterior panel finish, the pre-installed rubber grommet fittings on the 2.5″ drive mounts, the thick cable routing grommets, the full coverage of easily removable dust filters on all intakes, and even braided cables for anything that’s going to be on show, the list goes on and on. All of these things add up to giving you a product that looks and feels like a premium experience and certainly helps justify your investment.
The design is pretty cool overall, and there’s lots of scope for those who want multiple graphics cards, air or water-cooled builds, and thanks to the support of large expansion cards, as well as a huge amount of storage drives, it’s practical as a gaming system as much as it would be a workstation or server build.
It’s obviously not for your typical mid-range system build, but if you’re looking to build an enthusiast grade system, you’ll find the Enthoo Luxe is more than capable of meeting your requirements. The fact that it looks great is just a huge and very welcome bonus on top of an incredibly practical and easy to use chassis design.
Pros
- Excellent build quality
- Stunning aesthetics
- Premium build materials
- PSU shroud
- Exceptional cable routing
- Movable dedicated 2.5″ drive mounts
- Hinged tempered glass side panel
- Built-in RGB lighting
- Easily accessible and washable dust filters on all intakes
- Lots of drive bays
- Room for large graphics cards
- Great water cooling support
Cons
- None
“Phanteks have done it again, delivering a high-end chassis that meets the demands of high-end systems builds with flawless execution and style. The Luxe Tempered Glass is easily one of the best chassis on the market today.”