Case Layout and Details
Contents
Let’s start off this section with the front of the Enermax Equilence case.
The front of the case is a little misleading, with the side panel being made of tempered glass, the front is made of plastic material, though it is as glossy as the glass portion.
Even though the front is flat and has no holes for ventilation, both sides have the ventilation holes.
A close look to the ventilation reveals and etching of Enermax’s logo, it has a little treat as well that I will go over later in the review. To the left of the logo in the picture above, you can see the Equilence’s high density insulation foam.
Each side of the case where the side panels touches actually is covered in a sound dampening cushion reducing potential vibrations to ensure that the case functions as quietly as possibly. I highlighted above those areas.
The Enermax logo lights up red when the system is powered on, an LED indicator to let you know the system is on.
The top of the Equilence case, covering the additional spots for potential ventilation if you so choose also has a lid fitted with this sound dampening cushion as well.
This is the bottom side of the lid. Zooming up, we can get a better view of the sound dampening material.
This sound dampening material is present again on the top lid and on the rear side panel, the panel behind the motherboard.
This is what the top side of the case looks like without the lid. The top of the Enermax Equilence case can house up to 3 x 120mm fans or a 360mm, 280mm or a 240mm liquid cooling radiator.
Down a little from the lid, we find the front I/O ports. We can see here there are 2 x USB 2.0 ports, a microphone and headphone 3.5mm ports, 2 x USB 3.0 ports, a button to select speeds of the fans connected to the integrated 3-speed fan controller, a reset and a power button. In the picture you see above, I have the USB and audio ports with the dust covers still in place, a nice feature the case provides. These ports are also LED light.
This is what the LED lights look like lit, yes all of the case lights are red. I kept the plugs installed on the USB 2.0 ports and the microphone 3.5mm port while the headphone 3.5mm port and USB 3.0 ports had the plugs removed. You will also notice; the fan speed selector indicators are lit up set to the highest speed and the case is still dead silent. Later in the review, I will show you just how silent this case is.
The fan controller houses up to 6 fans. In this configuration I have the rear fan and the front 2 fans connected to the controller.
Coming on to the rear of the case, we find the section for the rear fan. It comes pre-installed with a 140mm fan but you can change it to a 120mm fan if you like.
Just below the rear fan, we can see the 7 expansion slots. These slot covers, as well as the panel to the side of it are ventilated as well. The covers are kept locked down by a locking mechanism which seems to be growing a little more popular with cases, I go over it in the build video.
Below the slot covers, we find the PSU housing slot. You can fit your ATX sized power supply in here.
A closer look inside where the power supply would sit, we can see one of the locations where the hard drives or SSD’s would sit. Let’s open up the case and check it out.
To get into the Equilence case, we need to remove all 4 of the thumb screws shown earlier from each side.
Removing the thumb screws shows the rubber mount shown previously. The accessories included brings an extra thumb screw and a rubber mount, again in case you lose one.
This is the inside of the case, without the tempered glass. If it looks incredibly spacious, that is because it is, there’s tons of room. You can fit up to a 420mm / 16.54-inch (up to 280mm / 11.02 inches with side radiator) GPU or card.
A closer view inside the case shows that you can fit up to an ATX motherboard. Towards the top of the motherboard tray and below on the PSU shroud, you can see rubber grommets to allow you to slip some cables through to keep the inside of your new PC nice and neat. The cage on the right side, allows you to slide additional cables a little more out of site, and is also home to up to 2 SSD’s on the rear side. The SSD’s and/or creative cabling will hide those unsightly cables, we go through this in the build video.
We can also see on the motherboard tray, the cutout that can be used to fit the rear mount for liquid cooling units or air cooling heatsinks.
A closer look towards the 7 expansion slots on the motherboard tray provides a legend of where Enermax has etched in the case what stand-off screws are needed for different types of motherboards, a great feature.
Here we can see mounts for AUI (ATX/Micro ATX and ITX) and AU (ATX and Micro ATX). In the solid high lights, we can see where Enermax has cut and molded the tray to allow for zip ties to be slipped in for cable management.
Zooming out some, I highlighted above with solid lines, the moldings for zip ties, and perforated high lights showing where the stand-offs are located.
Coming down a bit from there, we can see there is another opening, on the bottom right hand corner of this picture. This is also to allow for cable management. I used it in the build to have PCI-e cables from within the power supply shroud.
I show you here, how the ceiling of the case looks like with the lid removed. Originally, I was going to build into this case with an EVGA CLC280 liquid cooling unit, but the SSD and cable routing mounts on the right, made this not possible. While the EVGA CLC280 is a great unit, this was not the only case that caused me some trouble to fit it.
I ended up needing to use the Arctic Freezer 33 eSports One which actually turned out to be a great choice being that the heatsink in itself is very quiet as well. I am working on getting a list from Enermax on liquid cooling units that have been validated to work with this case. Their website, nor the manual has this listing, it would be very handy to have.
On the back of the case, with the side panel removed, we have a ton of nice features.
To start off with and one of my favorite features is on the rear of the motherboard tray, there are 2 trays for hidden SSDs’. I go over in the build video how to install SSD’s onto them.
In this picture we can see 2 slide out trays where you can either install 2 x 3.5-inch or 2 x 2.5-inch drives. To the right of the trays, we can see where the power supply slides into.
There is about 9 ½ inches of space for the power supply and cables. With my power supply, there was about 2 inches left over for cables and it measures 7.09 inches.
There are rubber feet, keeping your power supply from sitting flush on the base of this case. Also there are louvers for the power supply to be able to suck in some air to keep itself cool, but wouldn’t you suck in some dust?
No dust will be had here, there is a slide out filter on the bottom to prevent dust from being sucked up by the power supply. To make sure more air is able to flow into the power supply, the feet keep the case one inch off of the ground.
The slide out aspect of the filter is very handy, allowing you to every so often slide the filter out and run it under the faucet to clean it out. It is very important to make sure this filter is 100% dry before sliding it back into the case, you don’t wan to short anything out.
Removing the front panel of the case shows another filter over the front fans.
The filter is attached magnetically, so there is no need to waste time removing any screws and slips on and off easily.
Now that we have gone over every aspect of the case, I think it’s time to build a PC into, so let’s jump into the next chapter of the review.