Building a $2800 Gaming PC in the NEW Phanteks Enthoo Pro 2!

fantex was founded back in 2007 and i remember back in my new egg days uh getting these massive air coolers that they initially launched but it wasn't until around 2014 that i think fantax really broke out in the diy pc market and that was with the launch of their entou pro case which had a really nice range of features cost about a hundred dollars and that's still available today and it will continue to be available even though what i'm building in now is the follow-up case the enthu pro 2. i will be doing a build in this case today so follow along and see how it goes excellent team group's dark z series of ddr4 gaming memory features an aggressive yet stylish armored design with high performance aluminum alloy heatsinks to keep thermals in check the dark z series uses specially selected high quality modules to achieve ddr4 speeds up to 3600 with xmp 2.0 support for easy setup and kits are available in capacities of up to 32 gigabytes per dimm perfect for a gaming pc or a high-end workstation click the sponsor link in the description for more and if you're in the us you can also check out their ongoing july giveaway which you can still enter this week so right out of the gate this case is going to cost you 130 for the standard version or 140 for the version with tempered glass that we're working with today and it has some unique features like the ability to do a dual system configuration in here with some extra accessories available from fantex of course and a huge amount of support for water cooling configurations or adding a bunch of drives if you're looking towards building something more in the server realm that would actually go along nicely with the dual power supply setup capabilities but more on that in just a second the system i'm building in this case is going to cost around 27 to 2800 total and although that is a high-end system with a steep price tag we are featuring an rtx 2080 ti so that's a big chunk of that cost and i am going with the ryzen 3800xt which costs 400 but it is the fastest eight core 16 thread cpu on the 3000 series that amd makes that said i will point out a few areas here where you could shave the price down pretty significantly get it down towards the 2 000 range let me run through the rest of the parts real quick and then we'll take a closer look at the case so our cpu did not ship with a cooler because the 3800xt being the fastest they assume you're going to go with an aftermarket cooler which is a reasonable assumption but something to keep in mind if you go with this it is 400 bucks and if you're looking for something less expensive but you still want to maintain eight cores and 16 threads the 3700x you should be able to find for 300 or even maybe 10 or 20 dollars less than that and that does ship with the cooler so you could save another 150 or so by not going with an all-in-one like this a big part of the reason i chose the all-in-one which is the castle 360 ex from uh deep cool part of the gamer storm series which does have some pretty cool anti-leak technology going on but i just wanted to use a full-size 360 millimeter radiator in the case part of our analysis of building in there is going to be installing something a little bit more complex than the stock cooler that would ship with the ryzen processor all that said for the 550ish dollar combined price of both of these i would not recommend that i would recommend just going with a 3900 x which you can get for around 400 bucks now that would give you a 12 core 24 thread processor that would chip with the cpu cooler in it and then you could maybe upgrade that down the line anyway i just had to explain why i'm going with this configuration that is not necessarily one that i'd recommend people buy right out of the gate our motherboard though is going to be the msi mag x570 tomahawk wi-fi a nice full-featured motherboard this one will cost you around 220 dollars consider the uh b550 version of this motherboard which still has the usb 3.2 gen 2 front panel connector that this case does support so it's part of the reason i went with this motherboard i have the b550 version of this as well but it's currently in a different build now there is a power supply shortage right now and they're all fairly overpriced and somewhat difficult to find so that is why i am going with this which is an sfx power supply which is very small for this case but it's literally the only one that i had around that was kind of matched up with the rest of the specs of the build and wasn't currently in use so this is 80 plus platinum if you're shopping around for a power supply i'd recommend a full-size atx one because you don't want to overpay for the smaller form factor like this when it's not really being used but about 750 watts is a good wattage for a medium to higher end build where you might have more stuff going on and go for 80 plus gold or platinum if you can afford it and then of course fully modular is nice and make sure it's got all black cables our memory is going to be 32 gigs of team t-force nighthawk rgb and uh this i'm going with mainly because it's pretty it's actually really nice looking kit of memory uh this speed is not actually what i'd recommend either i have a 3600 speed kit linked in the video subscription but but it looks the same and it's the same to install so we'll stick with that and then for an ssd we have an m.2 nvme this is an intel uh 660p series and this is a two terabyte version i like the 660p because they're reasonably priced and it gets you a lot more of the speed that you can access with an nvme drive compared to sata that said it's not the fastest one overall so if you're going for a high speed consider a drive that does not use qlc memory like this one does of course we need a graphics card and i wanted to go with an rtx 2080 ti just because it's the fastest one available and i actually have quite a few of those available here in my garage or around my house but this is the only one that wasn't currently installed in a system it's also the largest and craziest one which is the msi lightning version it's got a big old triple slot cooler and led display on the side that has lucky the dragon dancing around for you and stuff it's it's a really nice car but it's also like about sixteen hundred dollars if you can even find it for sale anywhere so in the description i have i think an asus model link that's a much more reasonably priced than this one and also possibly available for sale again though a way to shave maybe five to six hundred dollars off of the overall cost of this build if you're looking to model something after it would be to go with an rtx 2080 or rtx 2080 super which you should be able to find for five to seven hundred dollars less and the last thing to mention is about the case here and for a hundred and forty dollars i think you're actually getting a decent amount of case here it matches up pretty well with some of the other competitors especially if you're comparing it to something like the leanne lee 011 dynamic xl that said i think part of the way that fantax has kept the price down on this relatively is it doesn't ship with fans so you got to add your own fans so maybe you like that because you have your own fans that you wanted to use that you wanted to swap in but it is an added cost potentially to the overall price of your build so bear that in mind if you're using this case i am going to sort of cheat by using these master fan triple fan setups which should greatly ease the installation process especially for the rgb connection so those are the parts we're working with today and i'm going to get this case out of the box so we can take our first look [Music] today's video is just focusing on the build and the build process and quirks of that wherever they come up where i feel like it should be pointed out but we actually also have the benefit of this case launching a few days ago which means some reviews have already come out that allows me to reference uh some thermal testing that has been done on this and i will link the gamers nexus video in the description for this that goes over a lot of the details of the case steve and crew over there did a great job on it but two things to point out here one is that mine came with accessories so haha steve uh mine's better their sample for some reason did not ship with accessories but the second thing is one of the big selling features of this case that fantex is pointing out is this mesh fabric on the front they're calling it high performance fabric there is a dust filter that sits behind it as well but uh steve and company did a bunch of different testing configurations and they found this case has very good airflow thermal performance for both the cpu and the gpu were right up there among some of the best cases that are out there on the market so fantax did a good job with the design of this case when it comes to airflow but it should be noted again no fans are included so when you're testing an airflow and doing a cross comparison it's hard to say well here's testing out of the box thermals and here's testing with one fan configuration and here's testing with another fan configuration long story short though if you're looking for a case that has good air flow and you're planning on really kitting it out with a lot of hardware even the potential like i said for a dual system setup uh it does seem like the enthu pro 2 has the chops for it our tempered glass panel though is nice thick and sturdy it's reinforced with some metal strips on either side where it actually hooks and latches into the case and it has some cap thumb screws on this side that you undo and then it kind of pops out a little bit and you lift it off it does not have the hinge at the back like some of the other fantech's cases but it does provide a pretty clear open and unobstructed view of the inside of the case so there's the pro two with the side panel off here's a quick look at accessories uh you get a booklet that goes over the ins and outs you have a little plastic container with all of your screws and mounting hardware and everything and this is one of the things with the original intu pro that fantech started including which was just one of the things that made it a little extra and a little special and a little like oh they didn't just chuck everything in a bag i have quite a few of these around and they always come in handy because i'm always like i need an extra screw maybe there's one in metal fantex container beyond that though we have some expansion slot covers and zip ties we have a mount for a vertical gpu configuration and since there are two places in the case you can mount a system this is actually a mini itx motherboard right there so you can mount it vertically and then you can use this bracket at the back of the case for your i o and then you'd either need to not use a graphics card with that system or you have to buy the ribbon cable so it doesn't come with ribbon cables it is ready for vertical gpu mounts but does not include the ribbon cables this mount could go down there to mount the graphics card and then the i o for that would be back there you also have vertical gpu mounts over here for the upper full-size atx system but again you would need the ribbon cable add-on accessory for that this is a gpu anti-sag bracket that goes along the pcie expansion slots over on that side we will be putting it to the ultimate test with the lightning rtx 2080 ti and then you've got these drive cages which are actually pretty nice because they're all metal and they have the capability of slotting into areas so they they kind of stick out you get four included with the accessories and you have the ability to stack some of these back here if you want and you have the ability to stack these all up here if you want so hopefully that gives you an idea of how you can kit this case out with a bunch of storage whether you're talking about 3.5 inch drives or these do also have 2.5 inch mounts on them although that's not the most efficient for that you should use these covers these are plastic pre-included the four of them there each can mount two 2.5 inch drives one to this side and then one that snaps in on this side the channels on the back here are supposed to be for routing cables through them after you've popped a drive in there i suppose or probably before you pop a drive in there so i don't know maybe you find those useful maybe you don't so up here is going to be your mounting area for your main system or your main motherboard which would be a full-size atx it also can expand to support ssi eeb size motherboard so it does have greater width there although if you went with a wider motherboard you would block some of these pass-through grommets now the power supply is going to mount on the other side of this panel right there and it mounts vertically so over here you have a grille not be for the intake for your power supply and the ac power cord to be over there this panel can be removed and that will allow you to install two power supplies which you might think oh that'd be convenient if i did a dual system setup however the dual system setup is right here so you have the choice you can do two power supplies and one system or you can do two systems and one power supply bantex makes a power supply called the revolt x that can power two systems at the same time so they're pretty much assuming you're gonna need to use that if you're gonna go with that configuration alternatively if you were going with more of like a server setup or something that would require some redundancy for a dual power supply setup though they have a power supply called the revolt pro that has the capability of linking to another power supply to either provide more power or provide redundancy in case of one of the power supplies failing so if you were setting up something akin to a server in here or something that you did need redundancy for you might find that useful all that said if you don't install a second system here and you don't install a second power supply here you can use this area down here for fan intakes or for mounting a radiator and if you can imagine you can get pretty thick with the dual fan or push-pull configuration and a pretty fat radiator down there at the bottom this supports a 360 or three 120 millimeter fans this mount here can also support a 140 millimeter fan and the top because there's actually not very much vertical clearance above the motherboard which is kind of odd in a case this big but so it goes but you can use this for fan mounts so you can do three 120s or three 140s in the top if you remove all these ssd mounts there's a pass-through right here so a similar configuration to like the liam lee 011 dynamic and you can do up to 420 millimeter fans there or a 480 millimeter radiator and then for the front up here which does have that uh the high performance fabric and then a dust filter behind it you can do four 120s or three 140s and if you just want a quick at a glance look at the fan support for this case there it is here's the page for radiator support as well they are saying that you can do up to a 360 millimeter in the top but you would be limited on motherboard component height to 55 millimeters so i feel like the top is going to be more suited for just fans up there on the side you can go all the way up to a 480 millimeter radiator with a 32 millimeter width on the front you can go up to 480 if you're using 120 millimeter fans or 420 if you go three by 140 and then of course you have the option to add rads to that rear exhaust if you want as well 120 or 140 and then up to 360 on the bottom here's the opposite side panel so just wanted to take a look at all the dust filters included in this case there's a decent amount of just little magnetic ones that are held on with magnets so you can filter some dust out you got one there for the power supply one here for the potential side intake for radiators or fans going on right here front panel pops off pretty easily by gripping the bottom this is a plastic panel although it does have sort of a brushed finish that helps it to blend in with i would say the nice finish that's on the case as well and this is that fabric mesh which uh is there's there's decent gaps here so you can tell why it still has good airflow but you can also potentially see how this would also probably let more dust in so it seems to be the ongoing battle with pc building is like how do you find the perfect balance between something that keeps dust out let's air in and also maybe even block some noise but you can use this by itself if you want then you've also got this front supplemental dust filter which has a finer mesh so that's going to keep more dust out but that will impede air flow somewhat fantax actually provided airflow numbers for with and without this mesh so they're acknowledging that some people might remove this if you want better in internal temperatures that's just going to mean that you're going to have dust build up a little bit faster personally though i would probably leave that on that's just me let me know in the comments what you would do there is also a dust filter up on the top same magnetic style one up here next to the power button you can see the mounts up there for a 140 or 120 millimeter fans and then down at the bottom you have a dust filter here that goes the entire length of the case which i find to be convenient there is one little thing here though this is going to be a great dust filter if you actually kid out the bottom here with intake fans pulling air in but if you have a power supply mounted right here that power supplies fan is probably either going to be up against this panel or up against the glass of the case so airflow might be a consideration there and of course i don't know of any power supplies that mount vertically and have the fan on this on the side there so this dust filter isn't going to be helping that out down here at the bottom of the front of the case you have a pass through here for a drain port so if you are doing a custom water cooled loop in this case that would be convenient and then here's the rear panel cable management area where you can see phanteks has a bunch of uh looped velcro straps here for gathering the bulk of your cables and going down here this is just a cable cover so it's held on with a couple thumb screws this is a metal piece as well and it seems to be purely for aesthetics or i guess if you really do have a grip of cables down here it can help to sort of wedge them in there although you would then have to pass them through these pass-through areas on the side and on the top that said though another velcro strap down there and then pretty often you have scattered around other tie down points there are three additional 2.5 inch drive mount brackets here as well these just pop on and off like that and i think the last thing to point out here before i start building is going to be our front panel i o all four of these are type a usb 3.0 ports i'm glad that phanteks didn't remove some of these because much as i enjoy having this and i do really appreciate having that this is a usb type-c port a 3.2 gen 2 capable one i hate it when they add this and then decide oh we can get rid of the type-a ports so glad to have those there as well this is an integrated rgb led control supports digital rgb leds there's a range of default effects that you can control with these buttons up here or you can of course still connect up to your motherboard and use software control and then there's a combo port for mic and headphone i don't like front panel mic and headphone jacks in general i think i would like them even less when it's a combo port you would either need a headset that had the single jack or you need to use a splitter off of that that said just just don't use front panel audio plug into the back or use an external deck so that's my once over for the case first impressions are i think uh phanteks has made some interesting decisions to sort of provide a lot of flexibility for a case it's a little bit bigger there's lots of room to work with in here it honestly seems a little bit overkill if you're just building a standard setup like a pretty straightforward atx system but if you wanted to go beyond that into water cooling into something that requires power supply redundancy or even the dual system setup provided you're willing to invest in the phantex revoltx power supply it seems like there's a lot that this case could do that other cases could not that said i am not going to build in it and we'll see if that changes my opinion at all i'm not going to focus on the build assembly too much we'll come back to you in a minute after i get the motherboard set up and everything [Music] here's a change to the original parts i was working with that sfx corsair power supply and i discovered sfx power supplies well i already knew this but sfx power supplies are designed for many itx cases typically so the cable length is very short and i don't really have any extensions on hand right now to use so i pulled this out of an existing system because that's that's the situation with power supplies right now but this is the uh cooler master mwe 1300 watt which is actually a bit more in line with the power supply that i think goes along with the system so that's what we're working with and now you know [Music] just routing some cables here and cable management is always one of those love hate things with a pc build but i like what fantex has done here with their uh pre-installed straps they have a little hook here so you can actually just unhook the whole strap in order to wrap your cables back behind there then hook it back on and then cinch it tight so it's fairly easy to access it's also not too difficult to undo and unhook if you need to route some more cables through there so a pretty good system the flip side to that and something i would be a little bit more critical of is going to be this cable cover panel here that flips up for one thing it's actually riveted on down at the bottom and i don't know if there is a reasonable way to remove it but if there is i can't figure it out just with some tweaking here you're gonna end up with a pretty massive jumble of cables down there and the idea is that you close this up and it secures them all but you have to pass everything through little gaps so getting that to cinch down is just gonna be a little tough and this is all gonna be covered by the side panel anyway so i i just kind of wish that fantax had given you some method to remove this panel if you wanted to go without it wait hold on i spoke too soon these little hinges right here can be removed or you can slide it off so just uh slide it to the left if you want to do that and remove this cover it's actually not too terribly difficult so that's good uh i was about to give up on that and then receive some divine inspiration i did persevere though and i did manage to get this remounted so i hope i don't have to pull that off anymore [Music] just been installing these master fan sf360r argb units which are three fans all in one units which is very helpful for wiring up the rgb as well as plugging the fans in but this gives you a little bit of a better idea of how much clearance there is at the top of the case with just a 120 millimeter fan mounted or three of them in this case because the 120 mounts are actually a little bit offset towards the tempered glass side panel there is a reasonable amount of clearance here i am using taller memory sticks though so just keep that in mind you can go with taller dims if you're just planning on installing uh fans to the top if you are planning on putting a 240 or 360 millimeter radiator up here though there is clearance just make sure you go with shorter dimms and make sure that the power delivery setup your cooling for that uh doesn't go beyond 55 millimeters and you should be good to go i did have to make the call as to where to position the fans and where to position the radiators so i went with the three fans in the front for intake three fans at the top for exhaust and then i'm going to be removing these 2.5 inch mounts for ssds that gives you access to another area to mount a 360 or up to 480 millimeter radiator i've got a 360 with our deep cool castle 360 ex so aiming for right about there and we do still have enough tubing length to get our pump block units over to the cpu [Music] so here's how the anti-sag bracket works it actually mounts from the opposite side of the motherboard and you can see sort of the nubs of the graphics card sticking through here hopefully you can now if you lift up on the saggy end of the graphics card you can kind of see those nubs shift down a little bit so if you can hold these down it might help you out with your sag possibly eliminating it so they have provided you with this little bracket slots in right there and then that mounts with some screws from the back so you're going to ship this up to hold those in place i'm sorry you're going to shift this down to hold those in place wherever you want them and then there's a little bit of give on the back and then you just tighten down the screws to hold it in place popping the front panel back on and i think this rig is all put together so we have power connected back here as well [Music] well you know it powered on the fans are spinning we even have some rgb lights scattered throughout which is uh nice because rgb lighting is often a real pain in the butt to set up and uh thanks i'd say in particular to those triple fan configuration setups that we have from cooler master that made it a lot simple those units have their pros and cons by the way and i did do a video more specifically on them if you guys want to check it out but if you set up a lot of systems and if it makes you want to tear your eyes out or your hair or whatever parts of your face out uh connecting up all those rgb lights that really does simplify it and so with our build put together we can we can sort of recap things what was good what was bad what sucked i wouldn't say anything necessarily sucked about the build in this case uh it was all pretty much straightforward there is some interesting configurations down here when it comes to the extra space they have for the potential second system or whatever else you might want to do with this lower area down here the most frustrating thing was that our deep cool 360 ex actually shipped with the wrong screws for mounting it from the back side so that was a little bit of a pain but once we figured it out it was okay on the plus side i would say this case has a massive amount of different configurations you can put it in as well as a massive amount of different locations for mounting fans flexibility is always welcome because it means you can take the same case and you can configure it for a pretty wide variety of different systems that said this is definitely a full-size case mid-tower probably i would describe it as a full tower and if you're looking at this bottom area down here it just looks a little empty granted i could have gotten a few more fans and kitted it out down there but that would just be adding fans to an otherwise empty space and i really feel like this space should be used for something so so i guess that's the most odd thing to me about the configuration of this case is i really saw the original phanteks enthu pro as sort of their consummate mid-range affordable bang for the buck case which is made for a single mid tower computer build in it whereas this system is bigger and has a lot more support for a bunch of different configurations for stuff down at the bottom and it's continuing fantex's uh seeming obsession with fitting two systems in one computer and that does make some sense because fantech sells the revolt series of power supplies which do slot into here very nicely and give you the capability of running two systems off of the same psu however it does make it more niche and a little bit more specialized so whereas with the original m2 pro i'd recommend it pretty frequently my only real issue at the time was with build quality and it could rattle from time to time but you could get rid of that by adding some rubber or some sound dampening the enthu pro 2 i would say i would only recommend if someone is considering building a much more specialty system something that requires dual power supplies for redundancy something that really benefits from having two systems in the same case which i think there's limited use case scenario for or of course those more advanced builds where you're really kidding everything out with storage everywhere or you're going for a very high end custom open loop water cooled build which i will say this has lots of room for so if you are going custom water cooling or if you have a use case for some of the specific stuff that this case is capable of and especially if you've already got your fans picked out and you know you're not going to use whatever integrated fans come with a case that might cost 180 or 200 then this seems like it's right up your alley i guess you could also contend that this might be like an upgrade path computer you know get your gaming rig set up right now and play with it for a while and then have the potential to build like a dedicated streaming system in the bottom somewhere down the line but let me know what you guys would do with this case if you think you'd go the dual system route or if you'd think you'd just kit everything out for uh high-end custom water cooling one of the standout features for me after putting the system together and especially since we're using this really bulky msi rtx 2080 ti lightning graphics card was that uh gpu support bracket it hasn't completely eliminated the sag but it's definitely helped with it a lot this was a really saggy card before and in fact it ships with a bracket that i left out so we could see how well the phanteks enter pro 2's support bracket is and i will say in this kind of worst case scenario it's it's doing a pretty good job but that is going to wrap it up for this video you guys let me know what you think of this build the parts i have chosen what you think of the the final finished look getting the tempered glass back on and everything and of course that sweet sweet peel gotta include the peel every single time if you enjoyed this video hit the thumbs up button on your way out and don't forget to stop by my store at paulshardware.net where you can buy shirts mugs pint glasses all sorts of excellent merchandise to help support my channel and also get you something with the thumbscrew logo on it thanks again for watching this one guys we'll see you next time

Channel: Paul's Hardware

Views: 267,976

Keywords: computer, PC, PC gaming, personal computer, computer hardware, paulshardware, phanteks enthoo pro 2, enthoo pro 2, build, RTX 2080 Ti Build, AMD, ryzen, amd ryzen, nvidia, AM4, how to build a computer, motherboard, cpu, ssd, graphics card, gpu, case, power supply, memory, RAM, ddr4, cooling, SSD, NVME, walkthrough, step by step, 3800XT, 3600XT, asus, strix, rog, msi, lightning, lightning z, enthoo pro 2 review

Id: bbkakWe6Nmc

Length: 27min 20sec (1640 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 26 2020