Test System

Assembly

Installing the motherboard is done by traditional means, with the use of screws. Things are pretty tight, but I had no issues tightening the screws properly in the end. Those who want to go for air cooling may install a cooler of up to 125 mm in height, which should be good for some fairly potent aftermarket units, but odds are pretty much every 120 mm AIO liquid cooler will perform better at a similar price point. Installing the GPU is really easy thanks to the inverted layout. You may place a graphics card of up to 300 mm in length inside the Bitfenix Portal, which is plenty for a high-end gaming variant.


It is great to see Bitfenix employ metal trays within the Portal, ditching the soft plastic ones we have seen in other enclosures of theirs. Rubber rings act as an anti-vibration measure, and there are actually multiple mounting possibilities for the drive. In addition to these, the tray also has mounting holes for 2.5" drives. Special screws hold the 3.5" drive in place, after which you simply slide it back into the slot of your choice until it clips into place.


The 2.5" bracket is simple but quite functional. Just add the drive, screw it down, and place it back into the chassis. Bitfenix has actually included two set of mounting holes for the bracket itself so that you can choose its orientation within the Portal.


Lastly, the SFX PSU is installed by traditional means with the use of included screws. There is enough space for some cable management on the floor, and it looks like you should also be able to fit SFX-L units, which have the benefit of using a 120 mm fan instead of an 80/92 mm variant.


With everything in place and the front I/O and case cables connected, the Bitfenix Portal is ready to be put back together. Naturally, you won't have the same level of cable-management potential within the chassis, so things will look quite messy. Connecting things is actually rather difficult at this stage. An amazing solution would have been to split each cable in two for the ability to pre-wire everything outside of the chassis and connect them to leads as you slide the frame into the chassis.

But considering there is no way to see any of it, that is perfectly fine as long as the cables don't get in the way of any fans, for example. Maybe Bitfenix could include interior fan grills to make sure this does not become an issue when sliding the system back into the shell. Unfortunately, the opening for the CPU cooler is too small, so you will have to take everything apart completely should you want to change the cooler or upgrade your CPU.

Finished Looks

Once the system is put back together and turned on, you will notice the noise level of the 80 mm fan in the rear due to the fact that it is running at a full 12V over the Molex connector. This is too bad as a simple 3-pin splitter could have avoided that issue. The LED lights up white, which looks great on the black chassis.


You can clearly see the full GPU inside the curved top window, which looks really sexy. I can see modders adding LED elements just to draw even more attention to what monstrosity you have within this compact chassis. In the rear, there are no real surprises as everything is where you would expect it. In case you are wondering, the GPU power LED is red because the SFX PSU did not come with PCIe connectors - which does not matter for this case review anyways.