Chassis

BitFenix Shinobi XL Full Tower Case Review

  

Photos, The Case Interior

 

ShinobiXL-interior-overview

We’ve got some room here! We’ll look at the fans first, we have to start somewhere.

 

ShinobiXL-interior-topRearfans

230mm continues to be large. That’s a 120mm fan next to it. Lots of cable management openings up there too, though they’re rather thin.

 

ShinobiXL-interior-BuildDefect

Looks like the man or machine that installed the PCIe slot covers was having a bad day. Thankfully the screw hole survived the experience.

 

ShinobiXL-interior-cables

There are two interesting things in this picture, one is the SATA pug to power the USB charging port, the other is the USB cable setup. Check it out:

ShinobiXL-interior-USB2-3Plugs

YES! Someone with a brain was here! Both USB3 cables also have USB2 plugs on them. You’re covered regardless of what your motherboard supports plug wise.

Up till recently there haven’t been any boards with multiple USB3 ports that I was aware of, but I saw a picture of one (A Z77 board, I believe) with two, so there you go.

ShinobiXL-interior-StandoffList

Stamped on the mobo tray is this nice guide to which standoffs need to be installed for each flavor of motherboard. To make installing the standoffs easier BitFenix included a tool:

ShinobiXL-interior-StandoffInstaller1

 

ShinobiXL-interior-StandoffInstaller2

Very cool, makes installing standoffs far, far easier than other methods. This is good as only two standoffs come installed. They both have raised inner bits that are supposed to hold the motherboard perfectly aligned. They didn’t fit in the screw holes of the motherboard I used, your mileage may (and hopefully will) vary.

This brings us to the drive bays:

ShinobiXL-interior-driveBays

The optical bays have an interesting tool-free mechanism. You push the center bit in and slide it (you can see one is pushed and slid) to latch the drive in place. Both sides have these latches. On the inside it looks like this:

ShinobiXL-interior-OpticalLatch1

 

ShinobiXL-interior-OpticalLatch2

The latches do a pretty good job, the drive can wiggle a little bit as with most tool-free setups, but it definitely isn’t going to go AWOL.

The HDD trays look like this:

ShinobiXL-interior-HDDTray2

 

ShinobiXL-interior-HDDTray1

On the sides are rubber grommets with metal pegs in them, other similar setups I have seen you put the drive in the tray, put the pegs in and then slide the drive. That does not work here, I’m not entirely certain how you’re supposed to do the install. I found it to be annoying at best. I was almost certainly Doing It Wrong. This setup does do a wonderful job of damping HDD noise. You can also see the four screw holes for attaching a 2.5″ drive (like a SSD), unlike most cases this will center the drive in the tray, nice!

Also involved in the drive bays is this 5.25″ (optical bay size) to 3.5″ external drive adaptor:

ShinobiXL-interior-3.5inchExternalBayThing

No tool-free mounting here, but that’s ok. It is nice and solid and matches the front of the case of course.

Accessory wise the pickings are somewhat slim:

ShinobiXL-interior-accessories

You do get plenty of cable ties, five stick on cable routing doodads and a sack of screws. I’m spoiled by the individually bagged screws Thermaltake included in the last case I reviewed. You do get a speaker too, and it has hot glue protecting the under-speaker solderpoints. This sounds simple, but having had a couple of those points break off in the past I was very happy to see it.

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