First Impressions and Case Exterior
The Colossus Micro-ATX emerged from the packaging in perfect shape, with a finish free of obvious defects. The case does make a very nice initial impression upon lifting it up, and is quite heavy for its size and feels very solid. The “SofTouch” black plastic on the top and front gives the enclosure a unique feel and a very smooth matte appearance, far above the norm for an enclosure at this price.
Computing With a "Softer" Side
Between the front and top panels there is actually quite a bit of soft-touch plastic employed on this enclosure. The rest of the case is constructed of typical rolled steel, but the prominence of the "SofTouch" (as BitFenix calls it) creates an impression that this case is different. Think of the soft plastic on some smartphones – like the back of an LG Nexus 5 or a Nokia Lumia 520, or if you remember the later Palm Pre phones. If you’ve felt that velvety, subtly rubber-like finish before, you know exactly how this feels (and looks). It’s not for everyone, and it will show finger oils and the like, but it doesn’t smudge as much as a traditional finish on steel. There is a tendency for lint to stick to this material, however. I used a microfiber cloth to wipe finger marks and dust away before taking photos, and this worked pretty well.
A Look Around
The Colossus Micro-ATX has a slightly aggressive aspect in its design, with a subtle rise along the top toward the front. The front panel comes to a point along the center, with the lighting bar setting off the detail with a slight "V" under the BitFenix logo. The design is reminiscent of the Raven series from SilverStone, and it's nice to see some style on a smaller case like this – especially at this price point. The angle of the trim along each side is sharply angled as well, and even without the lighting enabled the white plastic provides a really nice contrast. (We will cover the RGB lighting feature a bit later in the review.)
The right side panel features not only two USB 3.0 ports, but the traditional front panel connections to the motherboard (power and reset, status LED's) are on this side panel as well! Very unusual.
The back of the case has mounts for both a 120mm fan (included) or a 140mm fan. The inverted placement of the expansion slot covers and rear I/O shield cutout provide the first evidence of the internal layout of the case.
The bottom of the case features a magnetic "heat shield", which is intended to prevent heat from the power supply from rising up against bottom mounted hard drives. I removed it during my testing since I made use of bottom mounted fans.
Front Panel
The first thing I tested was the front door. I'm often skeptical of these, depending on the design. No worries here, though: Simply put, it’s the best implementation of a front door I’ve seen on an enclosure.
The door is constructed of two plastic panels, with an air gap and vents to promote airflow. It has the same soft-touch plastic finish as the case front and top (the side panels are steel). The element that makes this door stand out has to be BitFenix's use of magnetic closures, which holds the door level and secure while providing a satisfying soft ‘click’ when it shuts. The magnets are not overly strong, and while firmly in place when shut, the door is still easy to open. Very nice!
Even after repeated use I had no concern about the door’s durability. With the magnetic closures there are no parts to wear out or break. It’s just a smooth and surprisingly strong implementation. The hinges look like they’re made to hold up over time, and they’re connected to the case with philips screws if you desire to remove the door entirely.
Behind the door the front panel is also soft-touch plastic, and there are mesh covers for a standard 5.25” optical drive, and what I initially thought was a front intake fan – and ended up being the exhaust for the power supply. Once installed the PSU fan will face the front panel, with warm air directed upwards and out of the top through cutouts above the door.
Any chance you could append
Any chance you could append the heat results of the SLI configuration? As someone currently looking into building with this case, SLI/Crossfire thermals would have been nice to see.
That’s a good question, and I
That's a good question, and I attempted to provide GPU thermals but discarded the test data since I couldn't get anything over 80 C with the GTX 770's, single GPU or SLI. The fan just compensated to keep the temps stable right at 80 C, and I never saw anything over 82 C. It would be a different story with a less efficient blower-style cooler, and of course with any card that vents into the case – but I don't have a different pair to test right now.
Hello, great review!
I want
Hello, great review!
I want to buy the BitFenix Colossus Micro-ATX case but I think my motherboard will not fit in the case. I have a Acer dao61078lam3 mainboard (Acer Aspire X5400), they say its a Micro-ATX but as you can see on this picture below my PCI-Express slot is way up, do you think it will fit?
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-8s4r5futVEo/U0Lq5qbVb1I/AAAAAAAAYzg/qDDPmKR1DbY/s640/dao61-078l-am3-acer.jpg
Your motherboard is using a
Your motherboard is using a custom design, but as long as it's within the 9.6" x 9.6" standard for mATX it will fit. Your PCI-E slot looks to be in the right place, it's just a shorter board design so you'd have a little extra space up above here. My only concern would be with the standoffs in the case, as the screw holes are in the standard locations for mITX and mATX, and you have a proprietary OEM board… My guess is that it would be fine, but I'd still buy the case from a retailer that allows returns (like Amazon) just to be on the safe side!
I am curious, did you look
I am curious, did you look into mounting a 240mm radiator on the bottom, pulling air from the bottom, fit a 120mm fan on the exhaust in the rear and a fan pulling air in from the top directly onto the gpu? Thanks I cannot figure out the most optimal air flow.
I did, and you’re right about
I did, and you’re right about the best airflow plan – but the CPU is too close to the bottom of the case due to the flipped layout to allow an easy bottom AIO mount (motherboard layout dependent, really). It’s possible with mATX, but you start running out of room quickly. I felt that the upper just made sense for a 240mm, plus there’s the removable screen up there (no filters on bottom mounts).
I think a key takeaway might be to use a blower-style GPU in this case if you’re using an AIO on the upper mount – don’t want to push the GPU heat into the rad!
Sorry I forgot to add my name
Sorry I forgot to add my name for the previous comment. Hope you can get back to me. Thanks
What about a Front fan that
What about a Front fan that is an exhaust fan?
You state with mini itx and the top mounted AIO cooler but that looks to me like it would foul the graphics card.(Hoses)
And the side mounted controls could be better moved to the front, to the very edge, possibly? The lighting strip?? uh-oh, very personal choice..Finally storage.. would it really be possible;e to fit all the drives they say? 2x 3.5 and 3x 2.5? cable mgmt would be impossible wouldn’t it? I suspect 2×3.5 and one middle mounted 2.5 is all that’s practical.
Also route, rout. And Tourture, a trip on a coach to Lourdes perhaps. I use 2x Ps07 cases, looking at mini-itx next time, in perhaps 2 years.
I’ll try to answer in order
I’ll try to answer in order here –
1.) A front fan was my biggest concern when I was installing a system, since there’s no way to avoid blocking the front fan mounts when installing the PSU. It makes a lot of sense to use a front fan for exhaust or intake, but it’s not possible here unless you can mod a different PSU location.
2. Upper AIO mount isn’t a problem with the GPU because there’s enough space to go over it (big gap between GPU and side panel). Wouldn’t do upper AIO with dual-GPU though, myself.
3.) It’s possible to have 2x 3.5″ and 3x 2.5″ drives installed simultaneously, if you can use flat cables like the ones on the CX750M I installed. But even then it gets really, really messy! There was enough space to make it work up front but it looks terrible and its very hard to get to anything afterwards!
Would it be possible to
Would it be possible to install a Corsair H90 on the rear and still do a dual GPU Setup? Also, the Gigabyte Sniper M5 has slot spacing between the GPU’s. Other than the 5 expansion slots the case has, would the GPU’s still fit with the slot spacing in between?
I have the same question.
I have the same question. Because the H90 has a 140mm fan but the radiator has 170mm. That isn’t going to make it impossible to use dual GPU if we mount the water cooler on the rear?
i still can’t seem to find
i still can’t seem to find anything that breaks down the optimum air flow with this case :
can anyone let me know their thoughts on optimum airflow for this case while using the EVGA GTX 780 with an ACX cooler ?
other specs –
i5 4670k
Crosair H90 CPU cooler
Gigabyte G1 sniper M5 mobo
g skills ripjaws X 16 GB ram(2*8gb)
Corsair RM Series RM650 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular Power Supply
fans-
Bitfenix Spectre Pro LED Green 120mm Case Fan * 2 for the top
another Bitfenix spectre pro(probably LED Green only 😛 ) 200 mm case fan for the bottom
p.s.
also any thoughts about the MSI N780 Lightning in comparison to the EVGA ?
or throw in the extra to get the EVGA 780ti ?
im not looking to add another card for a while anyway… so thats not an issue.
This is an amazingly detailed review! My daughter recently inherited this cool little chassis, but it is missing the 9-pin cable which makes the door buttons work 🙁
I reached out to Bitfinex but they do not have stock on a replacement part, and have refused to tell me the pin configuration so that I can just build a new cable from scratch.
I can see from your photo “3c56-colossus16.jpeg” that the order of the cables is:
white
yellow
black
orange
blue
brown
purple
red
Is there any chance you still have this chassis kicking around? And if so, would you mind letting me know which pairs lead to , , etc? I’m desperate to fix this cute little chassis up like new for my girl.