A Look Inside and System Build
Opening up the Pandora is painless as both aluminum side panels are held in place with four clips, and simply pull straight off with moderate amount of force.
A look inside with the panel removed
The clips themselves are metal, and repeated use didn't have any effect on the connection during the review. It seems like a durable (not to mention convenient) solution.
Side panels are solid aluminum, and the clips seem durable
With the rear panel removed we see a large CPU cutout and openings for cable routing.
There is very little room between this rear tray and the installed side panel, so flat PSU cables will be an advantage here.
Looking at the case floor we see that the placement of the power supply will be to the left (rear), and there is a bracket on the right side which both covers the first 3.5" drive position and adds a 2.5" drive location (more on storage options a bit later).
Inside the case front there is a 120mm fan pre-installed for postive airflow across components, and this is also the recommended AIO liquid cooler mounting point with 120mm and 240mm radiators supported.
There is room for a pair of 120mm fans up front, allowing 240mm radiators
System Build
The build process was easy, though it took some extra care to keep the cables behind the motherboard from sticking out too far and preventing the side panel from clipping back in (again, very little room back there!).
I encountered a slight issue after installing the motherboard, as there is not enough space to rout the CPU power cable to the board after it is in place.
The cutout for CPU power is too small to allow installation with the board in place
To work around this I simply removed the motherboard and routed this cable through the small opening first, after which it fit easily above the board.
Storage
There is no optical storage option with the Pandora, and hard drive support is a little different given the limited interior space. First we have the case floor adjacent to the PSU, which offers the screw holes to mount a 3.5" (or 2.5") drive.
The other 3.5" drive opening is easier to get to as it's at the very top of the case. This mount secures a hard drive next to the included upper fan.
For SSD mounting options there are a couple of mounts to choose from. The first is down on the removable bracket that sits above the lower 3.5" drive mount:
The second is behind motherboard tray, and this is the location I chose for my system drive.
Cooling
As previously mentioned, the Pandora arrives with two 120mm fans included, with one in front and the other up top. The airflow pattern this creates should help direct cool air in across components and upwards out of the top.
One of the most common questions about enclosures is what kind of liquid cooler support they have. I quickly installed one here to test this out myself.
Here the Corsair H105, which has a 240mm wide radiator, is installed along the front 120mm fan mounts.
While the 240mm Corsair H105 fit nicely on the front fan mounts, I wouldn't advise attempting an installation above the motherboard. There is not enough room above the motherboard to install this cooler on the upper fan mounts, and the top doesn't support dual 120mm fans. It should be possible to install a single-fan 120mm AIO liquid cooler on the upper fan mount (if the radiator isn't too thick), but to ensure compatibility I'd recommend just sticking to front fan mounts for radiators.
Though demonstrating the compatibility with a liquid cooler here, I used a traditional air cooler for the completed build and all temp/noise testing.
Completed Build
This GTX 770 is 10.5" long, so there is clearly room for much longer cards
With a little extra care the final build can be very clean, and the layout should provide good airflow across components as well.
Next we'll see how the Pandora performed in temperature and noise testing.
She’s purdy! Thanks for the
She’s purdy! Thanks for the review SP, that’s a fine looking case! Thinking about this or the M1 for a future build 🙂
FYI, you cant fit an AIO
FYI, you cant fit an AIO cooler in the top mount position.. the spacing in the top compartment fits the radiator, but mounting the fan underneath hits the motherboard so it wont fit right. At least thats what I found
Good info, thanks. It looks
Good info, thanks. It looks possible but I didn’t try my H75 in there…
Two great enclosures. I would
Two great enclosures. I would get this one over the M1 if I was planning to stick with mATX or have the option of using dual video cards. The M1 is the best mini-ITX case I’ve used, so you can’t go wrong there!
Great looking case! I would
Great looking case! I would have considered this as opposed to the Aerocool DS Cube i ended up with. This thing has an ITX slim appearance but still manages to fit full size video cards. Pretty cool!
Microsoft called, they want
Microsoft called, they want their Xbox 360 design back 😛
Really nice Micro-ATX
Really nice Micro-ATX case.
Personally, the cost is a little too high. Also, I’d prefer an horizontal version with an external drive bay for a Blu-ray player/burner.
If you come across anything of that genre, please share!
I love it. At the moment I’m
I love it. At the moment I’m at one of my non main rig systems in a basic black under the monitor m-atx case, and it just looks like crap now. That case is a work of art, worthy of a bedroom system! This case now looks like a piece of shit that belongs in a crack house with a pentium 2 and windows 98.
I love it. At the moment I’m
I love it. At the moment I’m at one of my non main rig systems in a basic black under the monitor m-atx case, and it just looks like crap now. That case is a work of art, worthy of a bedroom system! This case now looks like a piece of shit that belongs in a crack house with a pentium 2 and windows 98.
Is the logo effectively
Is the logo effectively Useless on this Steam Box SFF look alike if you run SteamOS or Linux ?
Could always use a external
Could always use a external blueray drive.
Can’t look at this and not
Can’t look at this and not see Dell Optiplex USFF… I’ve worked on hundreds. This makes me wanna puke.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO NOW I
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO NOW I SEE A DELL OPTIPEX!!! AGGG thanks!!!!!!