Xigmatek Pantheon review

Despite its impressive name, Xigmatek’s Pantheon has a plain-looking exterior that doesn’t exactly stand out from the crowd. Style isn’t its strong point but it does have some functional features, including two fan controllers, a USB3 port and plenty of cable management options.

Inside the case, four external 5.25in drive bays and six internal 3.5in bays leave plenty of room for expansion. Two of the 3.5in bays are hot-swappable, which is useful if you frequently add or remove hard disks. Because disks are installed through the front of the case, there’s no way to mount a front intake fan.

Instead, the 3.5in drive cage is cooled by two 120mm fans in a push-pull configuration, sucking in air through one side panel and exhausting it out the other. This keeps any installed hard disks cool, but won’t help air circulate through the rest of the case. A single 140mm exhaust fan at the back of the case will remove hot air from the processor cooler, but overall cooling performance was less than impressive. A further five fans can be added, but this will make noise a real issue, although using the fan controllers will help.

Given its price, we were disappointed with the Pantheon. It has decent cable management options and there’s plenty of room for assembling a PC, but it has a very dull design and fan noise was an issue. The Fractal Design R3 looks much better, keeps noise levels to a minimum and only costs around £10 more.