Xigmatek Pantheon Review
A great casing for the price and with a lot of features and generous space this is definitely a case worthy of the its name!
Interior
The motherboard area is recessed in the interior of the case (nice touch).. A large cutout is present which provides access to aftermarket heat sink back plates.
Grommeted openings are located below and in front of the tray area for cable management. However there is no opening present at the top, thus making routing the CPU power connector cable impossible. It is either on the board or a custom opening has to be made.
The case will take a graphics card 330mm long. It can take a 6990 (which is the longest in production general consumer graphics card) without breaking a sweat.
The expansion slots are covered by re-usable blanking plates. Large black thumb screws are used to fix these or any expansion card to the case.
The power supply area has 4 rubber feet to suppress noise from its fan. To further suppress noise and vibration the PSU area has a thin layer of foam on the inside. There is a cutout for a 120mm or 140mm fan in front of the PSU area.
As the motherboard area lies in a recession, it does take quite a bit of space away from cable management at the back. However there is a groove around this area which is about an inch deep and several inches wide and will allow for comfortable cable routing. There is also two inches of space next to the drive bays to hide cables.
On to the drive bays. The 5.25” drive bays are all tool less and have a screw mechanism mounted on both sides (more Xigmatek design goodness!).
The 3.5” drive bays have a front-back configuration. To mount a 3.5” drive all one has to do is to take out the plastic caddy (which again seems almost too flexible), mount the drive and insert the caddy back in its place. There are two hot-swap SATA bays as well. At the back of these are two SATA data and power connectors. All that is required from the user to attach proper cables to these connectors.
