Inside the Case Part II
Inversion
The BitFenix Colossus Micro-ATX case uses an inverted motherboard design, much like the SilverStone Temjin TJ08-E (one of my long time "go-to" mATX enclosures for smaller builds).
A note here: as you can see the motherboard tray is blocked by what looks like a support of some kind. This is easily removed with four small screws.
This bracket is actually a storage drive mount, and holds up to two 3.5” hard drives on one side, and three 2.5” drives on the other. The bottom of the case is also designed to hold storage, with mounts for two 3.5” drives (provided no bottom fans are installed).
Those familiar with inverted case designs know that the motherboard is mounted “upside-down”, and the access side panel is located on the opposite side compared to a traditional case. This design allows for positive airflow from fans at the front of the case, but the layout of the Colossus Micro-ATX will have the power supply blocking access to the front intake. Here we see the PSU mount:
Thankfully the enclosure provides multiple fan mounting locations, so different options are easily available. Additional options for airflow include mounting dual fans either above or below, or both. By drawing in air from the bottom it may be possible to achieve some good cooling numbers without using the positive pressure from a larger front intake, though this would be hampered somewhat by a larger graphics card.
With a 120mm rear fan installed by default there will still be some heat escaping the back of the case, or this can be a mounting point for a 120mm (or 140mm) all-in-one liquid cooler.
You can see the alternate mounts for a 140mm fan in this view from the rear, and this of course provides support for 140mm AIO liquid coolers as well. In fact, this mount could be used for some interesting GPU liquid cooling options, such as Ryan's exploits in overclocking an R9 290 using the 140mm NZXT Kraken G10!
Worth mentioning is the lack of dust screens for the bottom and rear fan mounts. The top of the case has mesh in the removable panel that will help reduce dust (as does the front panel, though not used in this enclosure for intake fans), but for rear or lower fans there would be nothing shielding your system from buildup when drawing air into the case.
Additional Space
BitFenix has designed this case to allow for up to two full-length graphics cards with a micro-ATX build. The concession for this (and for the installation of a 240mm radiator as well) is the inability to install the optical drive.
In fact, to make things easier (and cleaner looking), the 5.25” mounting bracket can be completely removed with just six screws, leaving some much appreciated lateral room for graphics and cooling configurations.
With storage and optical brackets removed the case is very open and easy to work in
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.