PC cases are all the rage these days, especially during Computex 2017 too. The theme since last year’s RGB outbreak is simple – transparency. That’s where the BitFenix Aurora excels at – it’s a case that’s meant to be beautiful with its aesthetics and internals. Just how well does it fare out for a PC builder? Let’s find out.
Unboxing
The BitFenix Aurora comes in a fairly simple box. With a few feature highlights and a view of its internals. Pretty good when it comes to highlighting its features actually, as BitFenix adopts a very graphical way of representing and showing off its case features.
At the back reveals more information about the case, and the labels are done neatly too.
Opening up the box shows two thick foam pieces with the BitFenix Aurora wrapped in a plastic case. These two tempered glass side panels have a piece of sticky plastic film to prevent fingerprints and scratches. It’s nicely protected.
In the case, there are two different accessory boxes tied on the case body itself – and wow, the BitFenix Aurora comes with quite a lot of extras. My first nitpick is that the screws are not separated according to its type like how the Sharkoon BW-9000W did it.
I had another extra piece of accessory for the BitFenix Aurora too – and that’s another RGB LED strip. I asked BitFenix what’s up, and they said the variant available in Malaysia here comes with an extra RGB LED strip – just because. It’s actually quite a good strip for case ambient lighting!
[nextpage title=”Design”]
When it comes to the overall design of the BitFenix Aurora, its main core is rather squarish and boxy. The top and front plastic bezels snap on to place to accentuate its unique look. Once the entire BitFenix Aurora has been unboxed, everything can be seen through its humongous and heavy sheet of tempered glass, also known as its side panel.
To remove the tempered glass size panel, you’ll have to be really careful. It uses the common pegs and rubberized metal thumbscrews to secure it in place, but the real issue comes when these heavy glass panels are to be reinstalled. Just be careful not to slip and drop the heavy sheet of glass, as realigning the glass with these pegs aren’t easy since the top bezel is in the way.
Speaking of the bezels, both the top and front plastic bezels have to be removed to further strip down the case.
Here reveal three of the two 120mm fans included with the case. Its official specs (more on this later) says that the BitFenix Aurora only comes with one 120mm fan, but there are three included in the unit that I have here.
I’m fairly surprised by how spacious the case is. There is a special front-facing 2.5-inch mount to show off your SSD with BitFenix’s Chroma SSD feature – more on this later.
The power supply can be fitted nicely on 4 rubber rises, and the intake is filtered too.
[nextpage title=”Specifications & Features”]
Specifications
There are quite a few differences between the unit I have and the full spec list on BitFenix’s website. For example, I have and extra RGB LED strip included in the box – and I also have two 120mm fans mounted at the front and another 120mm fan at back already.
| Colors |
|
| Materials | Steel, ABS, Tempered Glass |
| Supported Motherboards |
|
| CPU Cooler | Up to 160mm height |
| Graphic Card Length | Up to 400mm |
| Expansion Slots | 7 |
| 3.5” Drive Bays | 2 + 2 |
| 2.5” Drive Bays | 2 + 1 |
| I/O |
|
| Front Cooling | 120mm x 2 or 140mm x 2 |
| Rear Cooling | 120mm x 1 (Included) |
| Top Cooling | 120mm x 2 or 140mm x 2 |
| Power Supply | Up to 220mm |
| Weight | 10.58kg (net); 11.94kg (gross) |
| Dimensions | 215 x 490 x 520mm |
| Highlights |
|
Now, these included fans aren’t BitFenix’s best or flashiest, but they get the job done really well. They look like 120mm BitFenix Spectre fans – the non-PWM version. Again, BitFenix included a total of 3 of them – 2 at the front and another one at the back. It’s more than adequate to get your system cooled down.
Features
All about that bling
Where do I begin? Let’s start with the BitFenix Aurora’s “SSD Chroma”. By my books, this is totally unnecessary – but the implementation of this feature is actually really neat. Right above the 3.5-inch hard drive cage is where a special 2.5-inch drive caddie is found. You can mount a 2.5-inch drive there – sure, but it wouldn’t look nice. So BitFenix created the “SSD Chroma” – a plastic strip with RGB LEDs illuminating the entire 2.5-inch drive. The real challenge for using this feature is connecting the SATA power and data cables, actually.
Extra features
The BitFenix Aurora comes with a reservoir bracket that can either be mounted at the front or at the top. Both front and top have the same cutouts where you can mount 2x120mm fans or a single 140mm fan. There’s no worry about whether or not the top fan mounts and clearance issue – because the entire mounting bracket is lifted upwards for maximum compatibility. By having the whole bracket raised upwards, you’ll have greater compatibility for top-mounted reservoirs, fans, and radiators. It won’t interfere with the motherboard’s top side VRM heatsinks.
I really like BitFenix’s tool-less snap-on rails for hard disk installation too. Take two of those rails, align properly and push then to lock onto the hard disk itself. Then, slide it in and it’s installed! No awkward plastic wrestling to get the hard disk inside!
My major complaint about the features is the lack of removable fan filters for both front and top fan mounts. They are just large plastic bezels with meshed slits as intakes. It’s not going to trap dust particles anyway. Even if it does, it’ll be really difficult to clean as a total removal of the bezels and cables attached to it. It’s a hassle.
The only removable fan filter available is the power supply. Still, it’s better than nothing.
[nextpage title=”Building experience, temperatures”]
Testing Setup
|
Test hardware configuration |
|
| CPU Cooler |
|
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 7 1700 |
| GPU | MSI GEFORCE GTX 1060 3GT OC |
| Motherboard | ASRock Fatal1ty X370 Gaming K4 |
| Memory | Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 16GB |
| Primary Hard Drive | Plextor M8SeGN |
| Power Supply | SilverStone ET-650B 650W |
| Chassis | BitFenix Aurora |
| Fans | Noctua NF-F12 |
| Others | SilverStone LS02 RGB LED Strip |
Building in the BitFenix Aurora
I have to say, the completed build looks absolutely fantastic with the BitFenix Aurora.
This is my first ever case with tempered glass. The BitFenix Aurora has tempered glass side panels on both sides – but the right side panel is a tinted pitch black. Quite unnecessary, as I find it quite difficult to stuff in all the cables behind the motherboard tray and close the tempered glass side panel. With the lack of power supply shroud, it’s quite a challenge to cable manage a non-modular power supply without a shroud.
The internal of the BitFenix Aurora is spacious. I took out both the reservoir mount bracket and also the upper 3.5-inch hard drive bracket. Doing that, however, reveals a large void at the top right corner – yet the case’s front I/O panel cables are coming from the top right corner.
Removing the front and top plastic bezels, however, aren’t pleasant at all. Those tabs that lock in place are extremely difficult to remove, and it feels like they’re going to break by the snap I got them off the metal body. Also, it flexes a lot to the point where I’m actually afraid it’ll snap in half.
Cable management
With that 20-25mm cable management space, it’s actually rather simple to stuff cables behind the motherboard tray and closed it shut. Of course, it does require quite a lot of brute force to make it happen – but it works. I wouldn’t worry about the tempered glass side panel shattering, as the BitFenix Aurora actually uses really thick sheets of tempered glass. It measures at a thickness of 0.5mm and it’s quite heavy too. Imagine this – the case can topple on its sides easily when are are no components inside and the left side panel removed and the right side panel installed.
Everything is installed pretty easily – and once it’s done, the case looks absolutely fantastic. The cutouts and rubber grommet placement are adequate, It would’ve been better if there’s another cutout for the front panel audio connector or the inclusion of a PSU shroud.
The left side panel is actually slightly tinted – which is good for RGB LED builds since they’re always unnecessarily bright and distracting when brought up to eye level height. Speaking of RGB LED lights…
Included RGB LED strip controller
It’s actually quite disappointing. I don’t know if the included RGB LED controller can be synced up with the motherboard as it is not documented. Also, because it has a keyed header, the included controller can only connect one unit of their own RGB strip.
The RGB controller board at the back where you can connect the included RGB LED strip and then press the LED button on the left of the power button to cycle through colors. At this day and age, I really recommend getting a motherboard with RGB headers instead of using this built-in controller on the case. Makes talking with the RGB LED strips much more convenient.
Since I do have a motherboard that has RGB LED headers, I ended up controlling all of my RGB LED strips via software instead of through hardware.
The SSD Chroma feature is… really just for show. Coming from me – someone who values function over form – I don’t see a point for it to exist, there’s not much use for it other than a being a majestic showpiece and probably with better temperature – not like any 2.5-inch drives need dedicated cooling anyway. But good gracious that SSD Chroma is a majestic showpiece.
Other highlights
Firstly, I have to point this out. I swapped out all of the included fans for Noctua NF-F12 fans because I obviously need PWM for silence. The rear fan for some reason has a little notch blocking the fan from getting installed properly. I’m utterly disappointed by this, and till now, I still have the NF-F12 mounted at an angle at the back. The rear fan can still expel heat from the case – it just looks weird.
Then comes clearance issues. To be honest, the BitFenix Aurora is really wide. There are extra clearance behind the motherboard tray for cable management, and even roomier space in front of the motherboard for large CPU tower coolers. BitFenix delivered – as the Noctua NH-D15 can be fitted inside without issue. However, the problem comes when I tried to mount the second Noctua NF-A15 fan. First one mounts in between the fin stack and it fits inside snugly – but the second fan will need to be elevated slightly because of the RAM height and causing the side panel from closing. I can rotate the NH-D15 by 90°, but that’ll disrupt the airflow I’m going for.
We’ve already pointed out this issue when we reviewed the Noctua NH-D15, but this is the first time that it has ever prevented the side panel from closing.
Temperatures
Speaking of temperatures, we’re finally migrated to our new testing system. Specs are as listed in the table above. The BitFenix Aurora managed to perform pretty well with these NF-F12 fans, too.
When the system is stressed out, the fans really do spew out a lot of heat. from the back. For these tests, I have no fans at the top of the case.
Ambient temperature is at about 27.7℃ during the time of testing. CPU is stressed via AIDA64 and GPU is stressed via FurMark. Fans are running at ~1k RPM.
| Idle | Stress CPU only | Stress GPU only | Stress both | |
| CPU (℃) | 30 | 49 | 38.9 | 56 |
| GPU (℃) | 31 | 33 | 74 | 76 |
The Noctua NH-D15 performed magnificently well in the test as expected – and yet I’m only using a single fan. I did try strapping the fan on the other side of the fin stacks to create a pull configuration instead, but the rear I/O shield is blocking too. What a bummer – temperatures can be further improved too!
[nextpage title=”Wrapping up the BitFenix Aurora review”]
After that said, the BitFenix Aurora is made with aesthetics in mind. It looks gorgeous with those curves bezels and tinted tempered glass. Honestly speaking, RGB LED strips even at very low brightness (with the ASRock Fatal1ty X370 Gaming K4 at least), is eye-blindingly bright. The top side mount is fantastic, large open space for front mounted radiator, and the SSD Chroma is though only for aesthetics – it looks fantastic. With two 5mm thick tempered glass as side panels, it is able to squeeze cables behind the motherboard tray. Having a power supply shroud would be perfect, too.
However, my main concern with the case is the use of cheap plastic for the front and top plastic bezels and the lack of dust filters. The BitFenix Aurora goes for a price of USD $99 or RM429 – which is actually quite good considering the gorgeous aesthetics and the inclusion of triple 120mm fans and an RGB LED strip.
Where to buy?
Like our Facebook Page here at NasiLemakTech.com for more news and in-depth reviews! Also, join our Facebook Group for insightful information and memes!
Subscribe to our YouTube channel too!
