BitFenix Outlaw Mid Tower Chassis Review

Building our system into the Outlaw was fairly quick, but not quite as quick as we anticipated due to a number of reasons. Our sample was provided with some faulty thumbscrews, which could indicate quality control issues. The screws were provided in blank bags making differentiated between them very awkward and time consuming. These may be considered small niggles, but something as simple as labelling a bag of screws goes a long way in helping the end user. The cable management in our particular system isn’t brilliant but this is more of a power supply downfall, rather than a case problem. GPU clearance is huge. Any card under 300mm will not even reach the 5.25″ bays and cards over that will easily extend on through it, provided there isn’t a device installed. This gives us a total GPU clearance in excess of a whopping 430mm!

Most power supplies these days are designed with standard ATX cases in mind. The fact that the Outlaw’s primary cable routing holes were on the opposite side of the power supply’s cable exit hole made cable management more difficult than it may seem. You have very little chance of hiding the 4 or 8 pin CPU power connector due to its common location on the motherboard’s upper left corner. CPU cooler clearance permits for a cooler under around 158mm in height but width is the bigger problem as the power supply is very close to the CPU cooler’s side. The North to South cooler orientation may be a more feasible option.

Hard drive orientation makes hiding the necessary SATA cables awkward as they protrude a few centimetres from the back of the drive’s connections. If you install a 2.5″ drive in its floor mount, the bottom fan location is rendered inaccessible… once again. The 5.25″ drive bays are very useful for hiding additional cables such as molex fan connections and molex to SATA adapters.

The use of black front panel cables was a smart move by BitFenix. They may be difficult to hide, but because they are black, they look acceptable when not hidden. The 120mm fan that BitFenix supply uses a multi coloured fan cable which isn’t the most attractive option. For any extreme users, there is the possibility of leaving the upper fan mounts empty and using a dual slot graphics card which extends past the case’s 7th PCI slot. Stability of the card may be affected however.

As previously mentioned, our power supply was the limiting factor in cable cleanliness, NOT the case. There is plenty of cable management room adjacent to the HDD cage, around 2 inches in fact. A limited amount of room is found adjacent to the 5.25″ bays, but this amount is still acceptable for SATA and fan cables. One frustrating feature with the Outlaw’s cable management is that the bundle of cables will interfere with your attempts to install a 3.5″ hard drive, something to bear in mind if you constantly change drives. The large CPU cooler backplate cut-out is convenient if your motherboard aligns with it correctly.

Recessed PCI slots are always welcomed on any case we encounter here at eTeknix. 2 thumb screws hold each easily-removable side panel in place. Replaceable PCI slot covers would have been a thoughtful feature, but BitFenix had to cut the costs somewhere. Only 120mm fan mounting holes are used for the rear fan, but we managed to easily fit an 80mm fan with the assistance of a few zip-ties.

An all black DVD drive will compliment the front panel. The curved design of the 5.25″ bay covers is a slightly odd choice as it means that the flat DVD drive’s front panel will look out of place against the curved 5.25″ bay covers beneath.