Phanteks Enthoo Luxe Tempered Glass Review

Performance Analysis

With only 1-2°C separating this case from the best scoring ones, the thermal performance of this chassis can hardly be called into question. The combination of plentiful and balanced airflow achieved by two 140mm intake fans and two 140mm exhaust ones is clearly an effective one, and no major components built into this case are going to be suffering from a lack of air.


In fairness, our testing was performed at full speed, so noise output was a little on the loud side. However, it's important to remember that the PWM hub is explicitly designed from having to do this, and provided you have a half-decent CPU cooler, your motherboard is unlikely to ever need to ramp things up to peak performance, although it's still reassuring that there's plenty of cooling prowess on tap if needs be. Even when gaming, we can't imagine that noise is going to be a real issue unless you're particularly sensitive to it.

Conclusion

Given that the Enthoo Luxe Tempered Glass is really just a revamp of an existing design with a tempered glass side panel tacked on, the real question is how well the older design stands up nowadays. The answer, in short, is really rather well. The Enthoo Luxe felt very much ahead of its time when we originally reviewed it, and many of the design choices are still very relevant today – Velcro cable ties, a PSU cover, RGB lighting, a PWM fan hub, and a very flexible interior courtesy of multiple panels are all example of this. Add to this sturdy build quality on account of some external aluminium and the new tempered glass side panel, not forgetting the commendable cooling performance, and you have a chassis that justifies its high cost very well to anyone looking to build a premium system.


We do wish Phanteks had included an internal RGB LED strip, as internal illumination works very well with tinted tempered glass, and a modernised I/O panel would also have been a nice touch. Beyond these nitpicks, though, there's little else to complain about, and the Enthoo Luxe Tempered Glass is thus well worthy of our top award.