Scythe Fenris Wolf

Interior

With both cases sharing the same frame, the interior of the Fenris Wolf is unsurprisingly very similar to the Hiper Osiris, although there is a big difference in the movement of the PSU mount from the base of case into the more conventional top corner, with the motherboard tray shifted downward and extended a little to allow for a rubber clad PSU support shelf to secure the PSU and lessen vibration.

The entire interior is pleasingly finished in the same powder coated aluminium as the exterior, making for a great feeling of consistency and quality throughout that we really appreciate – there’s something disappointing in opening up your shiny new case and finding its insides are finished in drab plain metal and it’s great that Scythe has looked to avoid that.

While there’s no removable motherboard tray, there’s plenty of room to fit hardware and even the chunkiest of CPU coolers. Scythe has included a load of replacement black thumb screws, motherboard risers and fittings, all of which nicely match that attractive powered coated aluminium used inside and out.


The drive bay system is the same modular layout used in the Osiris, with six separate aluminium plates (three on each side) secured to the chassis from the front, with pre-cut slits for mounting 5.25” drive bays between them. It’s possible to run the Fenris Wolf with two, four or all six drive mounting plates fitted and adding and removing them is as simple as unfastening a pair of front fascia mounted screws and sliding the plate out.

The drive mounting plates also double as a surprisingly capable cable routing system. As they’e recessed well away from the case's side panels, there’s plenty of room to stash the front panel cabling or any unwanted PSU cables out of sight behind them. While this is a simple solution, it’s surprisingly effective – especially for such a thin case.

Sadly though the Osiris’ excellent removable hard drive cage/fanmount has been replaced by a pair of extremely unruly aluminium plates used to sandwich up to four hard disks. Once assembled the hard disk mounts are then fitted between any of the case’s drive mounting plates, with three heavy duty rubber grommets on either side used to secure the hard drive mounting.]

While a great idea in theory, suspending the drives away from the chassis and dampening hard drive vibrations with the rubber grommets, the execution is very fiddly to not just assemble the drive mounting, but then also to fit it. The whole thing has to put together outside of the case and then installing it is a real bother – you’ll need to remove your graphics card for one, and it’s not an easy fit even then. While we appreciate there’s a real advantage here with the vibration dampening, which works very well, the execution is pretty poor.


Cooling is limited to just two 120mm fan mounts, with an intake fitted into the front of the case inside a removable housing and an exhaust in the usual spot behind the CPU cooler. While this might seem very limited, especially in comparison to high airflow chassis, Scythe firmly pitches the Fenris Wolf as an ultra low noise case and has included a pair of Scythe ultra low noise 120mm Slip Stream fans accordingly. Spinning at a whisper quiet 800 RPM, they’re bound to be easy on the ears, but as always with cases with fairly conservative cooling setups it’ll likely mean a compromise in cooling.