Building With The BitFenix Colossus
Double panels give BitFenix more than just noise reduction; they also add a place for LED lighting. The light controller allows users to select soft red or gentle blue, slow pulsating or constant brightnes, and of course off.
A few screwless installation features mean fewer screws in the Colossus installation kit. The kit also includes two three-piece hold-down straps for expansion cards.
Some readers will need to adjust the brightness and contrast of their monitors to see how BitFenix’ optical drive latches work. Pushing the latch button in forces drive engagement, and sliding it to one side locks the engaged position. BitFenix leaves the drive’s second set of screw holes accessible.
The Colossus includes seven slide-out drive trays with grommet-mounted location pins. Spreading the rails of the tray allows a 3.5” drive to be inserted, while 2.5” drives like our test SSD rely instead on screws.
The Colossus' card-holding straps wouldn’t fit our hardware, no matter how we tried to install it, as various other components (such as the CPU cooler and the graphics card’s power connectors) were in the way. We didn’t feel a big loss by not using these, however.
Remaining component installation followed the layout of our How To Build A PC guide, with exception of the USB 3.0 pass-through cable. We were forced to run that through one of the case’s four liquid-cooling egress holes before plugging it into the motherboard’s I/O panel.
One of the few modern cases that doesn’t include a fan on its rear-panel mount, BitFenix added a pair of its quiet 140 mm fans to its shipment for additional evaluation. As an alternative configuration, the LED fan mounts as a rear-panel exhaust, while the white fan acts as a bottom-panel intake.
