A Closer Look - Inside

Once the inner frame is out of the Portal's shell, you have nearly unrestricted access for assembly purposes. By default, the rear's outer piece is attached at this point, but you may remove it if needed. I left it on as I did not require any additional access. Interestingly enough, Bitfenix has placed a support beam right across the motherboard area instead of the frame's top edge. While this is important to keep structural integrity, it would have been nice if it were removable, or if Bitfenix had opted for a slimmer one on the top's edge to make sure it does not get in the way of GPU installation - which is the reason it has been placed as low in the first place.

There is not much in terms of cable management as you will not need to worry about it with the exception of the top window. It will be interesting to see how the I/O cables, which are part of the outer shell, act once connected and the inner frame is slid back into the chassis.


Taking a closer look at the bottom of the front, this is where you are able to install up to three hard drives. There is a single 2.5" tray attached to the top of the cage, which in turn can take two 2.5'' or 3.5" drives. The metal trays for these slide out through the front of the frame. Odds are, you won't need more than three drives for a system of this type even though Bitfenix could have theoretically placed 2.5" mounting holes on the floor underneath these 3.5" trays or allowed for stacking on the top 2.5" bracket with the proper design.


Above that, you will find a 120 mm fan set to push cool air into the chassis. The elongated mounting holes mean that you are flexible in how high you set it, and it allows for 120 mm radiator setups as well. This means that you could really build quite the potent liquid-cooled gaming rig with the Bitfenix Portal - pretty cool!


The SFX PSU bay in the rear is quite standard, but it looks as though you may also be able to fit SFX-L units in there as there is quite a bit of space. Above that is the aforementioned 80 mm fan set to push air out the back of the chassis. I should mention at this point that both cooling units come with a 3-pin and Molex combo cable, which is good as it gives the user the utmost in flexibility. However, I would have liked 3-pin cables with a Molex adapter plugged into them to reduce cable clutter, and it would be advisable to include a 3-pin splitter cable as many ITX boards only sport one such plug, forcing you to either go out and buy such an adapter or power one of the fans at a full 12V over the Molex connector. You can clearly see the two expansion slots in the very top, which should make GPU installation a breeze.


All the cables within the chassis are of the default variety and are sleeved black to go with the interior of the chassis. As these are attached to the inner side of the Portal's shell and are long enough, you should be able to slide the entire system out without yanking off any cables by mistake.