BitFenix Neos Review

[section_title title=”Conclusion”]Conclusion

Now that I have had the enjoyment of being able to build inside of the Neos, a budget friendly case from BitFenix it is time to see how it stacks up against the others.

Starting off with the performance and it is about as good as expected to be from a £30 case. The thermal performance actually held up quite well in all of my tests. My H80i was idling around 28c which is average for any case I have yet to put it in. I have a feeling the 2x 120mm BitFenix Spectre fans I added helped out quite a bit in this regard. My only suggestion would be to maybe add some mesh or similar to the top of the case to help it breathe a bit. However, not having any holes on the top of the case is surely a big help when it comes to acoustics. All the testing I did went well and at the end of the day you can only expect so much from a case that costs only £30 brand new!

To touch on the design and overall it is quite nice. You can choose to have a more professional look and use the all black side panel, or if you want to show off your system windowed side panels can be had for £10 if the specific model you are looking for doesn’t include one. The Neos definitely looks pretty professional, especially in all black and would suit an office environment with multiple PCs. The front of the Neos has a nice mesh look to it and the addition of the silver BitFenix logo goes over well and there are also 2x 5.25″ bays if needed.

Inside the case is a spot for a bottom mounted PSU, 3x 2.5″ SSD bays, 3x 3.5″ HDD bays and there are also a couple of water cooling hose holes towards the top in the back, a very nice addition. However, the two hose holes in the back are about all the help you are going to get with water cooling inside the Neos. Yes, you could mount a single 120mm rad there but that is it. The cutout in the motherboard tray for easy CPU cooler installation is big enough that swapping coolers should be done with ease. Now for the fun part, the cable management.

Cable management was a bit of a pain in the Neos for a few reasons. While they have specifically cut-out holes to route the cables to the backside of the case, once you do there is not a lot of room to hide them or move them about. One thing I felt was missing was a cutout to route the 8pin through the back and to the top of the motherboard, I know this is a £30 case but they sell windowed side panels for it and surely if you were to use the window panel you would not want to route the cable across your motherboard. The hole on the bottom where the PSU is and where you will route most of your cables is quite big and it’s open, there is nothing there to try and hide the cables out of sight, which in the big scheme of things is disappointing but for the price can be overlooked.  To sum it up there are a few ways to route cables but once in the back of the case there is not a whole lot to do with them, so be careful.

For me, the design aspect is a bit of a mix bag. BitFenix were nice enough to send us a windowed side panel as well as the normal full black steel one. When using the all black panel some of the downsides mentioned are easily overlooked as you won’t see the cables so it really doesn’t mater if they look pretty or not. On the other hand, if using the windowed panel the cables can be quite the eye sore and very upsetting. It’s a choose your poison type of situation.

Now to consider the price which is just £30 and you really can’t go wrong. BitFenix have given a budget option with some enthusiast options, while it could have been done a bit better, it’s £30!

Overall if you are looking for a cheap case that looks great from the outside for your new build or to hold you over until you can afford a more expensive case the BitFenix Neos will not let you down. While there are a couple of things I would have liked to of seen done differently, I have definitely on the same hand seen a lot worse for the same price!

I would like to thank BitFenix for sending in the Neos and also the Spectre Fans and Alchemy LED to really let me get the most out of the Neos as possible. I look forward to seeing more from them in the near future.