A Closer Look - Inside

You may easily take the whole case apart by releasing two screws for each panel. This gives you unobstructed access to all four sides of the case, which is quite important as this is an SFF enclosure. On top of that, two of the panels have secondary dust filters on them which ensures that your interior system stays as clean as possible, while the main sides sport perforation fine enough to act as such a protective layer instead.


Looking at the front of the Raijintek Ophion Elite, you may mount two 120 or 140 mm fans here on the external facing side of the chassis meaning the interior remains untouched for your beefy GPU. Alternatively, you may install two SSDs here. Initially the impression was that you could install these on the external side as well, but there are no openings to route the SATA power and data leads to them, as such you will be forced to install them on the interior of the chassis. The rear of the case offers as much ventilation as possible as well, but sports room for PSU as well as cooling and storage.


Even though the Raijintek Ophion Elite is quite compact, you may choose to install an more affordable ATX PSU without much compromise as long as it is compact enough. Above that, there is another possibility for a 120 or 140 mm fan on the exterior of the chassis. Once again, just like the the front, you may install one 2.5" or 3.5" drive here instead. In the very top, there is that opening through which you may run your cables that connect to the motherboard I/O panel as well as power.


The main side panel is meant for cooling or additional storage as well. A removable mounting bracket gives you the ability to install an AIO of up to 280 mm in size here. Once again, alternatively, there are mounting holes for two 3.5" or two 2.5" drives. As such, the entire case revolves around finding a balance between your storage needs and cooling potential. Even if you fill the Raijintek Ophion Elite to the rim with drives, you are left with a total of three fan locations - one in the rear, one in the floor and one in the top.


Speaking of the fan in the floor, you may access it by removing the base which includes the ARGB lighting elements. Raijintek makes this easy by utilizing pins to connect the wiring so that you won't have to deal with any cables. The 120 mm fan is set to push air into the case. It would have been nice to see a 140 mm variant here instead, as this location has room for it.


Shifting the focus to the interior of the Ophion Elite, you can clearly see that the mounting element for the front fans or drives won't find any space within the enclosure, which makes sense as this is where your triple-slot GPU will go instead. Thanks to the layout, there is no need for any riser cables as you may simply plug in your graphics card into the motherboard with its fans facing forward. this should really allow you to build a potent well cooled system as case fans can also aid in keeping your pixel pusher cool. The motherboard tray itself is simple but effective, sporting a cutout to give you access to the backside for easier cooler swapping.


In the rear, there is that same detail as with the front, with the drives or fan meant to go on the outside. A single hook for zip ties can also be found here which could be useful to keep cabling away from your board. That said, the Ophion Elite could benefit from additional hooks.


All the IO and case related wiring within the Raijintek Ophion Elite is sleeved in black and traditional. As the chassis comes equipped with a built-in fan controller you are meant to use the reset wiring to adjust your lighting effects. Unfortunately that PCB comes with a Molex connector instead of SATA. To make matters worse, even the pre-installed fan utilizes Molex and as such will run full bore at all times. As such, odds are, the first thing most will do is to pull that unit out and replace it with a PWM based one. The vast majority of brands avoid Molex successfully all together, as such there is really no reason for any of this inside the Ophion Elite either.