Phanteks makes some excellent full towers, but has only more recently turned to small form factors, although the confusingly named Mini XL is hardly small, with dimensions more akin to a large midtower. What this space offers you, however, isn’t only heaps of water-cooling support, but also the ability to house a second, full mini-ITX system inside with the purchase of a £23 upgrade kit.
There’s a vast number of fan mounts, most of which have elongated mounting holes, giving you some flexibility with regards to fan positions and radiator spacings. Three 140mm fans are supplied out of the box, and high-quality dust filters guard all intake areas. The side, front and roof panels all come away cleanly – you just need to disconnect the LED strip cable from the front panel. Modders will also appreciate the number of screws used – you won’t need a drill to remove the steel roof panel or optical drive cage, for example.
In fact, the design is well thought out everywhere, and each piece of hardware is very simple to install. There’s also plenty of room for CPU coolers and GPUs, while the five expansion slots mean that dual-slot cards can be used in the lowest slot of your micro-ATX motherboard.
For storage, there are two easily removable three-bay cages, along with two 2.5in brackets behind the motherboard tray, which can be relocated to be visible through the smaller window. You can also purchase extra 2.5in brackets, as well as3.5in brackets (none is supplied) for mounting on the side and/or bottom of the optical drive cage.
The pre-routed, pre-connected cables are great too. Coupled with the Velcro cable ties, numerous routing holes with secure rubber grommets and ample space behind the motherboard, they make tidying the case a joy. The three fans come connected to the fantastic PWM fan hub, which will power and control the speed of up to 11 3-pin fans using just a SATA 12V connection and your motherboard’s 4-pin CPU fan header – a great system for unified fan control and easy cable management alike.
All that space inside is good news for water-cooling. There’s 206mm of roof clearance for 280mm and 360mm radiators, which can also be installed along the floor, albeit with less clearance and the need to remove the lower hard drive cage. If you remove both cages, 280mm radiators are supported in the front, or 240mm radiators in the side (using the supplied bracket), with lots of space for thick setups. Even the rear can house a 240mm or 280mm model thanks to the dual fan mounts. Phanteks includes a pump bracket, with a thick rubber base to dampen vibrations, and a reservoir bracket.
The options don’t end there either, as there’s also the ITX Upgrade Kit. With this kit, you replace the rear panel then install a secondary motherboard tray and a 5.25in bay module with front panel ports and buttons. It’s a fairly simple procedure, but a dual system isn’t without issues.
For example, you lose support for 140mm fans in the rear, so we moved ours to the roof as an exhaust above the mini-ITX system’s low-profile cooler. However, the ITX motherboard tray prevents 140mm fans from being properly used here, and we could only attach it on one side. In addition, the second PSU must be an SFX model, and is installed on the floor, meaning it could easily conflict with your microATX system’s expansion cards and CPU cooler, especially if the latter is a tower model, as with ours. We also had to swap the PSUs, running the micro-ATX rig off the SFX PSU, due to cable-length limitations. You need to consider which PSU is responsible for the LEDs, fan hub and, if you’re water-cooling, your pump too. Using two systems in one case is cool, but it definitely requires some planning.
Performance
Cooling of the micro-ATX system is excellent. The lower section of the Mini XL has great front- to-back airflow, and both the CPU and GPU results are among the best we’ve seen, with the fans not spinning too loudly either. Adding the mini-ITX system to the thermal test at the same time has surprisingly little effect too; the CPU delta T increases by just 2°C, and although the GPU delta T goes up by 6°C, it’s also battling the SFX PSU for air.
Mini-ITX cooling isn’t great for the CPU, which gets pretty toasty, since it receives little cool air – it all seems to be sucked up by the graphics card, which actually does very well with a delta T of just 45°C; better than the Corsair 250D. However, turn on the micro-ATX system and it warms up by a massive 15°C, indicating that the larger system’s CPU cooler is stealing most of the air from the ITX graphics card, leaving even less air for the CPU, the temperature of which goes up by another 10°C. In fairness, there’s space for a larger CPU cooler than we used, but even so, the top part of the Mini XL is evidently a lot warmer than the bottom.
Conclusion
The Enthoo Mini XL is a unique case. If you can get all the power you need from a micro-ATX rig, then at £120 it would be a good match for a premium water-cooled system. It’s big, but an ATX machine with the same level of water-cooling support would require even more space.
Being able to house two systems, while niche, is a good deal for £165, and while the mini-ITX system became hot, we were running both systems overclocked and under full CPU and GPU load, and neither one throttled, which is impressive with just three fans. With a little forethought, you could use the Mini XL for many interesting projects.
