Enermax Hoplite Mid-Tower Case Review

1. Introduction2. The Enermax Hoplite: Bundle3. The Enermax Hoplite: Exterior4. The Enermax Hoplite: Interior5. Installation6. Testing Methodology, Temperatures and Acoustics7. Closing Thoughts8. View All Pages

We can't say we would recommend the Hoplite to those building their first PC as the installation guide is far from the best out there and is very vague. But for those who know their way around a computer shouldn't have any problems installing their components into the Hoplite.

First we installed the power supply into the Hoplite which is secured to the back of the case using four screws. Enermax have kindly placed a sizable cable routing hole next to the power supply which makes the process quite straightforward. There isn't a huge amount of space behind the motherboard tray for cable routing but, as long as you're careful, you shouldn't have any problems replacing the side panel.

Enermax have cut a sizable hole in the motherboard tray to facilitate the installation of CPU cooler backplates. This is accompanied by another large hole a little further down which can be used to route front panel connections to the bottom edge of the motherboard. Our cables got a little lost in the large hole as we are using a compact Micro-ATX board for testing.

Installing the motherboard was a simple process, requiring us to install a couple of motherboard standoffs to comply with our Micro-ATX motherboard and then screw the board down to these. Enermax have cut a number of holes all round the motherboard tray for routing all your cables. We decided to use the Coolit Vantage for testing which forced us to remove the rear exhaust fan. This only has a four pin molex connector so can't be connected to the inbuilt fan controller.

To install a hard drive in the system requires you to insert it into one of the bays on the right and then screw it into place. The hot swappable bays also require you to screw the hard drive into the tray but these can be used without removing the side panel of the machine.

Finally we installed the GPU into our system. The Hoplite has space for graphics cards up to 310mm in length which meant there was ample room for our HIS Radeon HD5830 Turbo.

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