Phanteks Enthoo Pro Build.....My Experience

A few weeks prior I psyched myself up and promoted
it on my You Tube Channel and then Friday came.

I got up rather early about 6:20 am and pushed the
button on my Black and Decker coffee maker then sat
down and waited for it to be done.
I had 4 cups and was getting the morning jitters so i
got started.

First mission was to disassemble my computer from 
my old Phanteks P400 case and in a smokers house
it was by no means clean.
I did find the thermal paste was drying up only with
14 months of use but the way i use computers it was
an eternity for the paste which i should replace 
every 12 months or less.

When I got the board out i swapped the 3rd gen
3800x 8 core for my new 3900X 12 core as the final
upgrade for the X570 Unify motherboard.

I then used my new Kobalt air compressor to hose 
off everything as it was time for its ritual cleaning.
I had been getting weird funky smells in the house
that i couldn't source out but as it was i had one 
dead fan and one really noisy one losing the bearing.

The Antec ringed RGB 120mm fans had a 5 year 
warranty and it was already up so my new case
had 3 new fans in it when i pulled it out of the box.
I purchased the case a few years back because its a
full tower and had the features that i wanted.
The new one however has a front mount USB-C
which this doesn't have but i cant complain because
my motherboard has that 1 port on the I/O panel.

Man what a mess i was in and i was up to my eyeballs
in hardware,I did have my IFIXIT Pro Tech Tool
kit out so i have all the different tools at my disposal.

Next was to set up the Enthoo on an oblong milk 
crate on standing on end while i sat in the chair
to work on it.
First the motherboard,I had all the mounts in
place and noticed the top middle and center middle
mounts were a bit raised as this was for centering
the mainboard in the correct place and got 8 out
of 9 screws in but the bottom middle mount was
off a smidge but no biggie.

Once secure to the case i had to put it on the kitchen
counter and routed the HD audio and usb 2 cables
with the USB 3 to their proper plugs.

I then unscrewed the power supply cover from the
rear and sat down to put that together.
It was a new Corsair RM850X series and soon 
found the factory made a mistake as I got 3 CPU
cables and 2 PCIe cables which meant i had to take
a PCIe cable from my old power supply which i used
for 7 1/2 years of the 10 year warranty.

It was the very same make and model and used a
Type 4 cable so whew!!!!!

Mounting the PSU in the case was a breeze then
for another 30 minutes was routing cables here
and there. The 24 pin ATX power connector was
a breeze and the 2 8 pin CPU power connectors
were just long enough,after all i was going from
a mid tower atx to a full tower atx case.

Once all the sata cables were routed I mounted 
a spare 500 gb WD Blue 2.5 in SSD for additional
storage.

Painless really so now I put the psu cover on and
put in the 3 screws to secure.
On the back i had to plug in two sata cable 
connectors one of which was for the Phanteks
fan hub controller the plugged in all 3 fans and 
rand the PWM to a case fan header so that it will
work.

I cant tell you how many times Ive forgotten
this step.

Next i put on the back panel and put the rig
on the milk crate again.
I got out a new tube of Noctua NH-1 thermal
paste and applied it to the cpu with a razor
blade cuz all you need is a thin even spread
as the cpu lid and heatsink have microscopic
pits and grooves and the paste fills them and
provides even thermal transfer.

I installed the 120 mm radiator and screwed
it in place to finger tight then an couple more 
turns and its on just dont torque it or you will
cut off the traces to the memory.

I then put on the cpu fan and put the end in
the right fan header.

Now I install the graphics card a Radeon
6800XT 16 gb and not only is it 5 lbs its also
just a smidge from the Hard Drive bays and
you have to angle it in....Whew

Next the steel anti sag support bracket that
keeps it from sagging because of the weighty
Heatsink cooler and the way the screws are
in this case it was a bit of a trick getting it
all screwed in as i have big fingers.

Then the 3 6+2 pin PCIe connectors to power
the video card....easy peasy

I also had a new 24x DVDRW installed for
creating a virtual machine,win95 to play
the old Arcade and Atari games like Asteroids.

Finally checked over my work and put the 
swinging glass panel in place and sat down
and fired up a Winston to relax my nerves
and tossed back a bottle of High Life.

I got the machine on the floor and plugged 
it all in and fired up my gaming monitor and
speakers and pushed the power button and
it was now alive.
In the madness i went thru a few boots and
MS made me make a new password and i was
digging for my MS account.

Next thing i did a restart and got into my
UEFI/BIOS to set the memory to 3200 mhz.
Save and exit.

I got into windows and verified my new cpu
in that and doubled checked with CPU-Z.
All Is good.

I did a burn in with 3dmark Firestrike and
others to see my score after the benchmarks.

Unigen Heaven bench mark did well too.

Sunday I need to replace my Noctua cpu
fan as the 6 year warranty ran out 2  years
ago...plus i need another fan to exhaust so
2 intake 2 exhaust plus im installing the
fron dust filter but have to pull the front
panel to do so....

This all took 6 1/2 hours and another hour
Sunday and its all good.

All in all i had a great time and thanks to
Phanteks for the manual telling me all 
about this great case.

Peace,BigT