BitFenix Shinobi Case Review (window version)

1. Introduction2. Unboxing3. Bitfenix Shinobi Exterior4. Bitfenix Shinobi Interior and installation5. Testing Methodology and Performance6. Final Thoughts7. View All Pages

BitFenix have made a big move into the chassis market over the past year, starting with the release of the Colossus full tower chassis.  Today we are going to look at a mid tower, the BitFenix Shinobi Window version. The Shinobi aims to provide all the high end features at a very affordable price. The Window version offers tool free drive installation and their ‘SoftTouch' surface designed to fend off nasty finger prints.

Main Features:

Killer Looks: From the uniquely crafted side panel window and fan vents, to the brushed aluminum accents, Shinobi carries through the signature BitFenix design philosophy of clean lines, understated elegance, and modern styling. If looks could kill, a glance at Shinobi could be your last.

Choose your Destiny: The stealthy digital warrior must adapt to their environment. Available in with or without a windowed side panel, you can choose the Shinobi that blends perfectly with your surroundings. Whether you choose to walk the path of light or darkness, Shinobi has you covered.

Maximum Expansion: Serious rigs require serious hardware. That's why Shinobi is engineered to handle up to three 5.25″ drives or eight 3.5″ hard disks. You can also install a 2.5″ SSD with the included adapter. Best of all, Shinobi can easily accommodate long graphics cards, which means that you can outfit it with the hardware necessary to eliminate the opposition.

Efficient Cooling: The effective gaming rig, like the warrior who wields it, must be cool under fire. Shinobi is adorned with unique mesh areas that can quickly dissipate excess heat. Shinobi can accommodate a bevy of fans – up to seven 120mm or two140mm fans can be installed to ensure that all hardware stays as cool as the blood running through an assassin's veins.

Plenty of Connectivity: The efficient warrior must have easy access to all the tools they need to get the job done. Equipped with no less than four USB 2.0 ports, Shinobi offers plenty of connectivity for all your USB devices so that you can keep you gear connected and ready for battle.

DIY Friendliness: Fighting should be done in game — not with your hardware. Shinobi comes with a wealth of DIY-friendly features, ensuring that getting your system setup is quick and efficient. A CPU cooler cutout makes it easy to change out your CPU cooler should the need arise. Shinobi comes with filtered fan intakes, keeping the interior clean and your system looking great. Shinobi Window even comes with convenient tool-free drive locking mechanisms for ultimate convenience.

BitFenix Quality: Shinobi comes with all the amenities and design touches characteristic of BitFenix chassis. BitFenix SofTouch™ Surface Treatment for resistance to fingerprints and stains surrounds the brushed gunmetal BitFenix logo emblazoned on the front. A luxuriously black coated chassis exudes both quality and refinement. With Shinobi, users can experience BitFenix quality both inside and out.

Specs:

• Materials: Steel, Plastic
• Color (Int/Ext): Black/Black
• Side Panel: Tinted Side Window
• Dimensions (WxHxD):  205 x 460 x 490 mm (ATX Mid Tower)
• Motherboard Sizes: Mini-ITX, mATX, ATX
• 5.25″ Drive Bays:  x 3
• 3.5″ Drive Bays :  x 8 (1 x external, using 5.25” adapter)
• 2.5″ Drive Bays:  x 1 (using 5.25” adapter)
• Cooling Front:  2 x 120mm (optional)
• Cooling Rear:  1 x 120mm (included) or 1 x 92mm (optional)
• Cooling Side Panel:  1 x 120mm (optional)
• Cooling Top:  2 x 140mm or 2 x 120mm (optional)
• Cooling Bottom:  1 x 120mm (optional)
• PCI Slots:  x 7
• I/O:  4 x USB2.0, Audio
• Power Supply: PS2 ATX (bottom, multi direction)
• Extras : Tool-free drive locking mechanisms

The BitFenix Shinobi is shipped in a sturdy, corrugated cardboard box. The front features the company logo as well as indicating if the case inside is the windowed version or the standard version.  Our review sample is the window version, as indicated on the box.

The back of the packaging has images of both versions of the Shinobi as well as information pertaining to some of the features available on the window version.

Once removed from the box the Shinobi has 2 Styrofoam pieces which offers good shock protection during shipping. There is also plastic wrapping over the chassis for additional protection from scratches.

The hardware provided with our review sample consists of the motherboard standoffs and ample screws to properly secure the motherboard.  They have also added a few cable ties and there are 4 rubber feet that fit on the base of the chassis.

The rubber feet raise it further off the ground allowing lots of room for air to circulate underneath the case. This helps with overall air flow and provides bottom mounted power supplies the ability to intake sufficient air into the unit.

The window allows us to admire the hardware we have fitted inside the Shinobi case. The side panel has a placement for an optional 1 x 120mm fan that can intake cool air across the graphics card and motherboard.

The opposite side panel is all steel with no added ventilation options.

The front panel features sharp design lines and the BitFenix logo with a brushed gun metal finish. There is also a mesh ventilation strip on both edges of the front panel to increase airflow.  Removing the front panel reveals the thin mesh dust filter used to cover 2 x 120mm fans. BitFenix include a single 120mm front intake fan here.

The rear of the Shinobi features 1 x 120mm exhaust fan, a place for the I/O shield, 7 expansion slots, 2 water cooling holes protected with rubber grommets and the space for bottom mounting the power supply.

The top panel features the same mesh covered ventilation strip as the front and includes 4 USB 2.0 ports, audio and microphone jacks and the On/Off power and Reset switches.  The rear portion of the top panel has a mesh covered area for mounting 2 top exhaust fans. The fans can be either 120mm or 140mm which is a nice option.

The top panel also contains a small PCB which provides our USB and audio connectivity options previously mentioned.

The base of the Shinobi has 4 raised areas. Raising the case further off the ground with these rubber feet increases the level of air flowing under the chassis. In the center of the base is a mesh covered area designated to hold an optional 120mm intake fan. There is also mesh cover over the area where the PSU will sit. The Shinobi can take up to 7 fans when fully configured which should be able to deal with most cooling requirements.

We can see a fully black paint interior and there are 3 x 5.25″ and 7 x 3.5″ dive bays all configured for tool free operation. There are several cutout areas to route cables as well as an area for accessing the rear of the motherboard should we have to install a CPU back plate.

As we mentioned earlier the Shinobi is designed for a bottom mounted PSU. The 1st image above shows the mesh dust filter located below where the PSU sits. Directly in front of where the PSU sits there is a space for an optional 120mm intake fan. BitFenix have also provided a removable mesh dust filter for this area. As we look further up the back panel there are 2 holes provided for water cooling tubes which are protected by rubber grommets.  There is 1 x 120mm rear mounted exhaust fan, one of the two fans which ship from the factory.

The top panel of the Shinobi is capable of holding an additional 2 x 120mm or 2 x 140mm exhaust fans. The 1st image above also gives a good indication of how large an area has been removed to allow access to the back side of the motherboard if we need to change cooling solutions. The next image shows us the drive bay configuration of the Shinobi.  There are 8 x 3.5″ and 3 x 5.25″ bays which should be more then enough for most people. We can also see the 2nd 120mm fan that comes with the Shinobi. This fan draws cool air into the case and it gets expelled out the rear of the case.

BitFenix have also added a removable tray that can be used for a floppy drive, a hard drive, or an SSD depending on the demand.

We mentioned earlier that the Shinobi ships with 2 x 120mm fans. One serves as a front loaded intake fan while the other exhausts warm air out the rear of the chassis. BitFenix sent us over enough of their Spectre fans to test the Shinobi with a full compliment of fans. The Spectre fans are 12V, and draw .10A of power.

They operate at 1000 rpm(+/- 10%), they have a CFM rating of 43.5 (120mm) or 47.7 (140mm) CFM, and are noise rated at <20dB(A). Now that we have everything in place it's time to move on to our system build and testing.

These 2 images show our hard drive being installed using the tool free mechanism to secure the drive in place.  To secure the hard drive we just replace the mechanism and turn the center piece clockwise to lock it. The 5.25″ bays differ slightly, to use them we push the mechanism upward to release the clip and after the drive is in place we just need to align the clip and insert it into it's original place.

Here we have the PSU mounted in place at the bottom of the chassis and there is even room left over for a bottom mounted 120mm fan.

The Shinobi interior has ample room as shown in the image above. We have used the MSI 990FXA-GD80 which has not two, but four 16x PCI-e slots and is capable of running either CrossfireX or SLI multiple graphic card setups.  The cable routing options are adequate to allow a pretty clean wiring job, without too much added effort.

To test the window version of the Bitfenix Shinobi we will be using an AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition CPU matched up with the MSI 990FXA-GD80 motherboard and a Sapphire HD6950 2GB graphics card.  BitFenix have provided us with enough fans to test the windowed Shinobi for the maximum cooling potential (7 in total).  To cool the AMD 1090T we will be using the Noctua NH C12P SE14.

Test System

Chassis: Bitfenix Shinobi Window
Processor: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
Motherboard: MSI 990FXA-GD80
GPU: Sapphire HD6950 2GB PCI-e (1536 unified shaders)
Cooler: Noctua NH C12P SE14
Memory: 4GB G-Skill DDR3 1600 (6-8-6-24-1T)
Storage: WD Caviar Black 500 GB SATA II
Power Supply: SilverStone Stryder Plus 850W

Windows 7 Professional SP1 (64-bit)
AIDA64 Extreme Edition 1.80
IntelBurn Test 2.5
Furmark 1.9.1

We recorded the load temperature using AIDA64 Extreme Edition while stressing the system using IntelBurn Test and Furmark for 30 minutes.  For the idle temperatures, we left the system idling at the desktop for 30 minutes before recording the temperatures.

The Shinobi in it's default 2 fan configuration produced good numbers which fall within the range we expected out of the box. The fans in the Shinobi are basically inaudible even when run at full throttle so we tested with the fans on maximum speeds.

Adding 5 additional fans reduced temperatures across the range as we would expect. Our overclocked CPU load temperature dropped 5C from 48C to a much more reasonable 43C. The additional fans also reduced the Furmark results by a full 6 degrees Celsius when we tested with our 1090T overclocked  to 3.7GHz. Even when we configured the Shinobi with all 7 fans, the noise is minimal and was drowned out by the fan on our 6950 graphics card.

BitFenix have made a very positive statement with the Shinobi Chassis, offering a high quality product at a price point that is hard to ignore.  The Shinobi features sharp design lines and plenty of configuration options. Case routing is impressive and we appreciated the tool free mounting for the hard drives and optical drives.

The Shinobi ships with just 2 x 120mm fans but can handle up to 5 x 120mm and 2 x 140mm fans. BitFenix supplied us with enough of their Spectre fans to fully load the Shinobi and we were pleased with the low noise emissions, even when turned up high. The thermal performance isn't class leading, but it performs well when we factor in the price.

In the United Kingdom, the Shinobi can be picked up for £50 – the windowed version we reviewed today, costs £7 more (£57), which offers great value for money.  At this low price point the BitFenix Shinobi is a “Must Have” item for people who want an attractive, high performance case for very little outlay.

Pro's:

• clean design lines.
• excellent build quality.
• ability to hold 7 fans.
• good cable routing.
• priced to sell.
• tool free hard drive install.

Con's:

• panels flex when installing fans.

Kitguru says: For the price, this is hard to beat.

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