Phanteks Enthoo Pro II Case Review

Rating: 9.0.

Phanteks revealed the Enthoo Pro II full tower chassis back at CES earlier in the year and I’ve been looking forward to getting hands on to see how it compares to the original. I used the original Enthoo Pro chassis and it was a loyal servant for many years. The build quality and feature-set of the original were impressive, so I can’t wait to see what improvements, if any, have been made with the Pro II.

Phanteks claims to have improved the design of Enthoo Pro II over the original, while the company has also added a tonne of new features. Users can now install dual systems or dual power supplies inside the new case and there is also an abundance of options for storage devices and exotic custom water-cooling solutions.

In typical Phanteks Enthoo Pro tradition, the exterior of the Pro II is very understated. It's a plain black design and a traditional-looking square almost box-like shape – something that I quite like. However, Phanteks has attempted to pull the Enthoo Pro II into the new generation with the addition of a small but well-designed RGB lighting strip inside the middle of the case that splits the two sections.

The main focus of the Enthoo Pro II is to provide a home for a huge amount of hardware. There are acres of space inside the chassis for water cooling, with four potential areas where big radiators can be installed. Both in the front panel and to the right of the top motherboard tray are mounting points for up to 480mm radiators, 420mm radiators can be installed in the roof and there is additional space in the floor of the chassis for a 360mm radiator too.

Not only does the Enthoo Pro II offer an excellent opportunity for water cooling, but it also provides users with the option of installing two systems inside one case. In the top section of the case is a typical motherboard tray that can support up to E-ATX form factor with a total of eight PCIe slots available, while the bottom of the case can house a completely separate mini-ITX system mounted on the power supply shroud.

This means that the Enthoo Pro II could be ideal for various scenarios, such as integrating two systems into one chassis for streaming, a dual system for busy professionals with the top system perfect for installing high-end desktop components maybe for video editing while utilising the bottom of the case for a mini-ITX gaming build.

Due to the huge amount of storage options available in the Enthoo Pro II, the case could also potentially be used as a home server with an integrated PC. Out of the box, the Enthoo Pro II offers support for the installation of up to eleven SSDs plus four HDDs. Additional HDD cages can be purchased separately to expand storage space to a total of a whopping twelve 3.5-inch HDDs.

Another feature of the Enthoo Pro two is the option of running two power supplies inside the chassis. Using one of Phanteks own Revolt Pro power supplies, users can install a second unit into the case connected to the Revolt Pro to offer additional power for a single system or to be used for redundancy purposes in case of power failure

It seems as though Phanteks has thought of everything with the Enthoo Pro II, even the front I/O ports and buttons can be shared and split between two systems. Four USB 3.0 Type-A ports on the front panel can be split, so two for each system and the reset button/HDD LED on the front panel can be connected to the second system to use as a power-on switch and power LED.

Included with the case is a range of accessories. Four 3.5-inch HDD cages can be installed to the chassis in various locations, additional brackets are available to buy extra. There is also a Vertical GPU installation bracket (PCIe riser cable has to be purchased separately) as well as a GPU anti-sag bracket that fits the back of the motherboard tray. The case also comes with a handy container with various screws, motherboard standoffs and other installation hardware.

You would be forgiven for thinking that all this will come at a high cost, well not in this case. The Phanteks Enthoo Pro II is priced around the £130 mark which almost makes it a budget chassis compared with other full tower cases on the market, but it is certainly not low of features, let us just hope that the build quality isn’t budget too.

Key Features

• Extensive Water cooling support
• High capacity for storage
• Full Tower design
• High airflow front panel
• Dual system or dual power supply installation

Specifications

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