Xigmatek Panthéon case review

Cases by leeghoofd @ 2011-02-14

I hardly review any cases, as most cases are sort of look alikes. With most mid tower sized cases biggest draw back is the lacking space for bigger cards or failure to mount any decent watercooling gear. For the purist almost no cable management is possible or lacking other features thereof. Though when the guys from Caseking gave me the opportunity to review Xigmateks latest creation, the Panthéon. I was immediately intrigued by it's design and features. Completely coated in matt black ( also on the inside for that nice extra pro looking touch : ) Without wasting too many words let's explore the Panthéon :

specifications and features

About the Xigmatek company :

Purpose and targets of becoming one of the worlds leaders in thermal PC Industry were set for Xigmatek Co. Ltd in 2005, the founding year! To ensure reaching this project aims, Xigmateks management followed up with hard work, experiences and customer friendly business style.

Honing one of the world's most efficient manufacturing operations, Integration Presence in major economic regions, being tied up with most important strategic alliances between suppliers and academia and further majority investments in R&D are some of Xigmateks aggressive incensement strategies.

Combining the cream of product designers, R&D engineers and technical people (main team in Germany) Xigmatek is proud and full of confidence to offer excellent quality products and service to cover the customers requirements and demands.

Within the standard channels as the consumer market and the distributing electrical appliances, Xigmatek will keep on focusing on development and set up even new sales channels to comply ever-changing demands and requirements.

Several years of experiences company background in Thermal IT industry provides our customer the best, reliable, environmental and performing Thermal/Cooling Systems including excellent Service to fulfill global users and customers demands.

First glance on the outside of the Xigmatek case doesn't reveal much of it's nice features. Xigmatek opted to give it that little extra bling by adding a thin alu looking foil.

You can already clearly spot the fans for the HDDs, blowing air in/out the sides of the case for maximum HDD cooling. The rear 140mm fan ready to expell the heat via the back.

The inside is very spacious. Those that look carefully can already spot the 2 dust filters at the bottom. Quick screw less release ODD holders are also included in the package.

Xigmatek gives the case modder/builder to arrange an easy cable mangement in a flash. 4 Precut holes, topped off by a rubber for maximum coverup. On the right a shot of the two bottom dustfilters. Also take a look at the 4 rubber grommets to dampen any vibration created by the PSU.

Another picture from the front, nicely showing the removable meshed grill to give easy access to the HDD trays. All the included fans are of the acrylic clear type with white LEDs. Xigmatek included 1 140mm fan and two 120mm fans. But you can easily mount two more fans in the top for maximum heat evacuation.

more nifty features

Since this is a mid tower sized case users expect a lot of the HDD storage capability. The Panthéon doesn't dissapoint there at all. 6 removable trays are ready to take ya terrabytes of storage. Access is pretty quick too as the front mess can be easily pulled off.

For normal 3.5 inch HDDs no screws are required. For 2.5 inch or SSD's, the Xigmatek engineers already have foreseen mounting holes. Yes this time you need screws to mount the latter :) To allow me to properly mount the Corsair Sandforce SSD I had to remove one of the mounting brackets. They pop off pretty easily, so no need to use brute force.

We find two hot swappable bays in this 90 euro case. No need to use a seperate mount or such. Just use one of the trays , pop the HDD in and connect it to the hot plug.

The Panthéon includes 3 case fans ( one 140mm and two 120mm ) all three are connected to a fan controller. Their speed is fully adjustable. The LEDs on the fans can be turned on and off via a small square button.

The usual USB2.0 and E-SATA port are present too. Lately more and more case manufacturers are adding an USB3.0 port. Sadly with the Xigmatek the latter still has to be hooked up via a cable to the USB3.0 port on the backplate. Luckily the cases interior is spacious that routing the USB3.0 cable is no problem.

Test setup and installation

Here's a a quick rundown on all the hardware that I'm using for the case reviews :

Asus Crosshair IV Formula

AMD 1090T Thuban CPU@4000mhz

Corsair 4Gb Dominator PC1600C8 rams

Asus ATI 5870 2Gb Videocard

1 Corsair Sandfore F60 SSD

1 Western Digital 1Tb S-ATA HDD

1 NEC 16X DVD S-ATA Writer

Thermalright VenomousX CPU cooler with one 120mm fan

BeQuiet 700Watt PSU (non modular)

The large cutout allows easy access to the rear of the CPU socket. No more requirment to remove the motherboard when mounting a new cooler. On the irght side a close up on one of the PSU rubber grommets, this to eliminate any vibration. A very classy detail Xigmatek engineers.

Due to the spacious case size, the wide space between the motherboard tray and the sidepanel combined with the 4 cutouts makes the cable management job, very user friendly. We especially used a non modular PSU to see how effective the case can be to hide all them cables. Too bad we couldn't route the 8 pin connector behind the tray. The BeQuiet PSU 8 pin cable needed to be half an inch longer to achieve that.

All the above mentioned hardware, neatly mounted inside the Panthéon :

A quick glance at another possible setup in this case. Using this time a CoolIT Vantage for cooling purposes. You can spot the rear 140mm fan now to suck out any hot trapped air via the top.

Cooling performance

The finished build looks pretty clean. Most cables neatly tucked away to allow maximum airflow. We tested in 3 different manners : First with with no spinning case fans. Secondly with the fans at 50% speed and last but not least with the fans running flatout. This to see how they influence the operating temperatures of the build and its components.

Let's start with the CPU. Our AMD 1090T running at 4000Mhz at 1.4Vcore, during an hour prime95 run, custom set 12K -12K.

Since it's quite a large case, CPU temps with active case fans are pretty good. It's pretty normal when you take away all the airflow that the temperatures are negatively influenced. The impact is in fact pretty big, more than 5°C on top of the same setup with the fans spinning at 50% ( +/-1000rpm) The idle temps are the result of half an hour idling, before starting he stress test.

Our Asus Crosshair IV has got onboard sensors for the Northbridge en Southbridge chipset temperatures. The read out was monitored via the AIDA64 software.

Exact same behaviour as with the CPU tests. More fan speed means better cooling performance. Take note that the Xigmatek case has got no fan directed straight onto the motherboard. Two fans blowing on the hard drive bay and one sucking hot air out via the back or the top. The temperature difference is marginal between 50% fan speed ( +/-1000RPM) and full blast (1890RPM), the noise generated however is something totally different.

With the ATI 5870 running a 10 min MSI Kompressor tests we logged the highest temps. Ofcourse we did not manually put the GPU fan at a fixed value. The fan was regulated by the vidcard itself, determining optimal fan speed in regard to the heat generated. Very close results here, as the fan speed at load makes the difference. Ranging from 30 to 36% to keep the stressed ATI GPU under control.

Noise wise it's was a good idea by Xigmatek to include the fancontrollers. Running at full blast the included fans generate quite a riot. Reducing to the fan speed to +/- 50%, resulting in approx 1000RPM for the fans makes them almost inaudible. Yet looking at the above results, still creating a decent airflow to keep ya components pretty cool.

Conclusion.

The Xigmatek Panthéon didn't let me down. A clean build, with maximum airflow and good cable management is not hard to achieve. Bundle this case with a modular powersupply and it would look like a clinical build. Now what I really like is the black coated interior. It makes your computer look that little bit more pro. but the included features really top it off.

Quick access to the 6 HDDs trays via the front panel is one of them. Add on top off that 2 hot swappable trays for easy HDD swapping. the screwwless design for HDD trays and optical drives is nothing new, but the Xigmatek Panthéons design is spot on with cases, that leave a big hole in ya wallet. Talking about the cost : this beauty retails around 80 euros, which is still in the affordable range. The windowed version retails around 90 euros.

Long videocards are no problem in this case, neither are large Powersupplies. Both my Enermax 1Kw Galaxy and Corsair HX1000 fit in like a glove. The numorous holes for cable management are nicely engineered, too bad there aren't more holes behind the motherboard so you could almost hide all front panel and audio cables. But that's nothing a modder couldn't take care off.

The two bottom dustfilters really work and are very easy to clean. You can slide them out of position and either rince them with water or let your favourite housewife take care of them.