I'm just really tired of how completely phoned in these case reviews are. There has been absolutely no real development in test methodology for over a decade as far as I can tell, and Darksaber honestly seems to not WANT to discuss the merits or demerits of any case, instead simply regurgitating information easily found elsewhere or in photographs, then making a couple of token, entirely visual, observations that most savvy users could pull out of the picture gallery without assistance.
The worst mark of any case review on TPU is a 6, and that was over a decade ago. Darksaber gave the Bitfenix Enso resounding praise and a 9.5 score, despite the fact that Gamers Nexus reviewed the same case MONTHS beforehand (November 15th 2017 versus March 19th 2018) and clearly showed that the case was
one of the worst thermal performers on the market, being even hotter in *stock* format, than the Cooler Master H500P - a case that by March 2018 when the review had been published, had already been revised by Cooler Master due to poor feedback surrounding it's restricted front intake. Even Play3r.net, who did an almost equally worthless review with no thermal data, said
"I initially had reservations about the amount of air intake the front panel could provide, but in operation, our test system didn’t show any signs of overheating. More detailed testing would be needed to ascertain the actual effectiveness here, but for the average user, I don’t believe there would be an issue." - This sure as hell ain't test data, but at least Play3r seem to be able to actually *consider* potential thermal issues, even if they're too lazy to even check their CPU temps after installation - Darksaber's review didn't mention thermals at any point.
Tom's hardware also at the very least mentioned "The front of the case lacks vents of any sort. All incoming air is drawn into the chassis via a cutout in the bottom inner edge of the fascia." - They also tested the case (although only provided numbers for 3 competing cases rather than contextualising those numbers versus an actual, performance oriented case), and concluded in their con's section "Mediocre thermal performance" and mentioned noise also throughout their review.
Guru3D also reviewed the Enso and, while they also failed to provide any thermal data, they made reasonable criticisms of the build quality and design throughout their review, they tested for noise levels, and they also concluded "The airflow is ok enough for a mainstream build, the air intake at the front bottom and exhaust at the back and top will take care of that. We do recommend you to actively use the top side vent (and never use the closed lid), this is trivial for your cooling needs. So yeah granted, airflow is a bit borderline though and could have been a lot better."
Compare that to the TPU review and... well. I'll give DS some credit - The word "airflow" does appear in the article. Once. When he's talking about the intake for the damned PSU, not the rest of the system in any way.
Basically what I'm getting at is that the majority of case reviews out there in the space are complete garbage, but the ones on TPU somehow manage to be the worst of the bunch in terms of completely ignoring the two primary performance concerns relevant to any case design.
