Nfortec Caronte Pro

[bejamartins]

(I'll add pictures later)

 

I decided to make this review because I can only fine one or two online, and in Spanish so thought this could helpful.

 

Over the last few years a few Spanish Brands have been entering the market trying to present themselves as a budget alternative. The most notorious to me has been Mars Gaming for their international strategy, but now it seems to attract competitions. One of said brands is Nfortec that came to my attention only recently.

 

The company seems to only being attacking the Spanish market but is possible to export, at least from re-sellers, and that's how I ended up purchasing my chassis.  It had a strong user rate on several websites, was cheap enough in the last Cyber Monday for me to be able to re-allocate my budget elsewhere in my build, and last but not least, seem to have a distasteful amount of RGB as it should be and, at the same time have a clean design.

 

First impression

 

Now, my first impression of the chassis was of surprise, for two reasons: the first being that it's a very small box. For a moment I thought I had bought a microATX chassis for my full ATX board, but no, it just fits barely on height. For me this was great since I had a relatively small space destined to put my build, but might not have been - I think Nfortec should make more emphasis on the size on their marketing, and really use its smallness as a selling point for people who aren't paying too much attention to specs details, specially considering some selling sites don't list dimensions.

 

My second surprise has to do with build quality. Stock photos are photoshopped in the way that makes it seem too glossy, giving it a cheap look, but when in hand, it looks with considerably better quality. Doesn't feel exactly premium, but neither cheap as well. 

 

Ventilation

 

Being a small chassis, ventilation has it's limits, but comes equipped with a 120mm fan on the back (RGB fan on the Pro version), and compatible with two 120 or 240 mm fans or a radiator on the front and top. The front however doesn't seem to provide necessary air paths, so I'd count only with the top.

 

Design
 

The Caronte tower an overall modern design with 1 side panel, front-top I/O, a PSU shield that also covers the HDD bay (can support two 3,5'' or one 3.5'' and two 2,5''), a back partition for cable management and a another 2,5'' drive and an open CPU back window for easy cooler replacement. There isn't nothing much to point out except the small space makes hard to manage the HDD bay with the PSU cables, even with a modular PSU.

 

Illumination

 

The chassis a a thick external RGB strip and the Pro version comes with an RGB Nfortec logo over the PSU shield facing sideways. I like RGB but am not a particular fan of the lack of subtlety or smoothness on the lights an patterns. Lights and colors are stronger and more vivid (and displayed in thicker areas) than what you'd see on most traditional brands, but that's my taste.

Nfortec has its own ecosystem and comes with its own controller (located behind the motherboard) that is both compatible with the main proprietary syncing systems like Aura or Fusion and has its own remote controller that has to be used to choose to sync with the motherboard or override with a different color scheme and transition (the default isn't syncing which is unfortunate as selection doesn't seem to persist after shutdown).

 

I could not test syncing with my motherboard properly as it is Gigabyte and it seems they just gave up supporting the RGBFusion tool...

 

The controller looks a bit cheap, and very similar with the ones you may find with RGB strips you can order off Ali Express. This made me wandered if Nfortec stuff is just a rebrand or if it has original designs, although I found no evidence thus far of my suspicion.

 

Score

 

Presentation: 8/10

Price: 9/10

Build quality: 7/10

Ventilation: 6/10

Design: 6.5/10

Final score: 7,3/10