Inside

Inside the Phantom there are a few key features that help it stand out from your typical case. At first glance it does look like the average mid to high end gaming case on the market with its black interior, PSU on bottom, configuration. Surprisingly NZXT managed to pack a lot of drive bays into the Phantom. There are two hard drive cages, one with 5 trays and another with two more. This configuration is nice because you can remove the larger of the two to fit a longer video card while still having room for two hard drives. There are also a total of five 5 ¼ drive bays. One thing I found interesting here was the inclusion of a tool less clip in the design but the clip itself is nowhere to be found on any of those drive bays.

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Looking at the interior of the Phantom as a whole you can see all of the wire management included in the case. There are even multiple rows for when you are running E-ATX cases and there additional width. The CPU backplate access hole is nice, but a little small compared to others we are seeing on the market now. There is a chance depending on the motherboard you end up using that you may still have to remove your motherboard if installing a different heatsink in the future.

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One feature that stood out to me as an example of NZXT thinking about how hard it will be to work in the case are the holes in the rear support beam to give access with a screwdriver to the PCI slot thumbscrews. Even though they are thumbscrews it is nice that they gave access to them with a screwdriver.

 

For cooling the Phantom has multiple locations where you could mount fans but comes with four total, one 200mm orange LED fan up top and one fan on the rear.  There are also two 120mm fans attached to the right side panel vent. The lack of a front fan is disappointing, and it’s even more disappointing in this situation because getting a matching orange LED fan from NZXT isn’t possible, they have been discontinued. As a whole having four fans is more than what other cases in this price range would have, but maybe losing one side panel fan to add the front fan would be better.

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Behind the motherboard tray you have an even better view of all of the Phantom’s wire management. You can also see multiple tabs used for zip ties to clean up your wiring from the back. As far as room behind the motherboard tray goes you have a typical amount, without good wire management you could still run into problems putting the side panel back on.

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garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #21743 22 Dec 2011 19:20
Thursday's Case Review
Plague's Avatar
Plague replied the topic: #21780 25 Dec 2011 08:26
Nice review... Sucks about the quality control on that one, couldn't believe it myself.

One question I had was were the LEDs orange or still the standard blue, I didn't see that in the write up.
Brandonxcore's Avatar
Brandonxcore replied the topic: #21782 25 Dec 2011 09:08
They're orange LEDs in the fan controller.
Plague's Avatar
Plague replied the topic: #21783 25 Dec 2011 09:22

Brandonxcore wrote: They're orange LEDs in the fan controller.


good... I really don't like the blues ones. I have manually changing them to green.
Arxon's Avatar
Arxon replied the topic: #21784 25 Dec 2011 12:21
I want this case to match my headset i have. And my G15 keyboard.
Brandonxcore's Avatar
Brandonxcore replied the topic: #21785 26 Dec 2011 00:54
Im digging this case, it's currently on my desk :p It's pretty black and orange, haha, I feel like Im supporting the Bengals EVERYTIME I look over, lol.
Kelf's Avatar
Kelf replied the topic: #21883 29 Dec 2011 21:54
They need alllll the support they can get... bahaha

But this case is sweet!
Myndmelt's Avatar
Myndmelt replied the topic: #21915 30 Dec 2011 20:19
I haven't been a fan of the phantom look until I read through this review it seems like a nice case. I like the color scheme, this would be cool if I wanted to do a Komets theme PC or something.

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