Now we come to system installation. As hardware we use a AMD Ryzen 5 1400* on a MSI B350 PC Mate* (overclocked to 3,8Ghz) with 16GB Crucial Ballistix Sport LT grey DDR4-2666*. The Ryzen is cooled by a Scythe Ninja 5*. A GTX 1060 6GB from Gigabyte AORUS* is responsible for the image output. The power supply does the non-modular be quiet! Pure Power with 400W. In order to enhance the cabling optically a little bit, single sleeved cable extensions from Phanteks.
As was to be expected for a case of this price class, there were hardly any problems during installation. There is plenty of room to work and the space on the front and back is generous. Together with the pre-installed spacers, the system was quickly installed and properly wired.
However, there is one point of criticism here. As previously assumed, the placement of the cable glands is not really thought through. Many newer motherboards have their 24-pin connector very high up on the right side. However, the Enso Mesh is placed in the middle. Here we would have wished for an additional rubberized opening in the upper area. There is also an opening for the 8-pin EPS cable, but this is much too small and is mostly hidden after mounting the mainboard. The cable must therefore be laid before the mainboard is screwed. That’s not very practical.
There are slight limitations with regard to hardware compatibility. Graphics cards up to a maximum length of 340 mm and CPU coolers up to a maximum height of 160 mm are supported. This is sufficient for almost all GPUs and many CPU coolers. It gets a little trickier with the power supply. Since the HDD cage is riveted, the Enso Mesh can only accommodate power supplies with a maximum length of 160 mm. Here it becomes however already very close with the accommodation of all cables.
Mounting hard disks and SSDs is simple and easy. 3.5″ HDDs can be mounted in the frame without tools. The assembly of 2.5″ devices requires the use of normal screws.
BitFenix equips the Enso Mesh with two pre-installed fans ex works. One of these fans is RGB-capable, the other is simply black. Both fans have a normal 3-pin connector for power supply. The RGB fan was even equipped with a Y switch. The maximum fan speed is 1000 rpm. At this speed, however, both fans are clearly audible. In addition, the front fan unfortunately emits clearly audible background noises.
Finally, we come to the temperature measurements. For this I ran Prime95 and Furmark for 15 minutes at a room temperature of 17 °C and then determined the temperature of the processor and graphics card with the CPUID HWMonitor. The test was performed in two different scenarios as shown in the table below.
As can easily be seen on the power supply cover, the RGB lighting in the BitFenix Enso Mesh is compatible with Asus’ Aura Sync technology. All LEDs are digitally addressable and can be controlled via the Asus Aura Sync Utility and aligned with other components.
If you still use a motherboard without the appropriate RGB headers, the lighting can also be controlled via the pre-installed circuit board. The fan and the RGB strip are connected directly to the board using a proprietary connector. The color combinations can then be switched using the button on the I/O panel.