NZXT Phantom Review - PAGE 3

Carl Poirier - Tuesday, August 24th, 2010 Like (2) +my favourites (1)

At first glance, the NZXT Phantom seems roomy. The first thing one will notice is that it has been painted white on the inside as well! It's much more elegant than the grey steel found in the large majority of chasses. Another thing worth noting is the second hard drive cage, allowing for up to seven 3.5" drives to be installed. Furthermore, all five 5.25" bays feature a tool-less design. As for mounting the motherboard, there is a hole in its tray to allow changing the processor cooler without removing the whole tray and board. In the motherboard tray are also four I-shaped grommets for routing all kinds of wires and cables. The removed panel includes two 120mm fans using the standard 3-pin connector. Each of them pulls 0.16A on the 12V line at full speed, making for 1.92W of power each.

Both side panels use a tool free system, however it is not comprised of thumb screws only. There is a little spring-loaded mechanism in the inside, holding one thumb screw on the outside. The panel then comes hanging on that thumb screw which just needs to be pushed downwards to release it. In the second picture, one can see that the paint won't last long in this area since the screw slides on the steel instead of just being screwed in the hole. In my opinion, it's not the greatest tool-free system, but it gets the job done.

There is lots of room for cable routing behind the motherboard tray. One can also see that the second hard drive cage can be removed by unscrewing a few screws, providing some extra room to work with if five or fewer drives are used.

Both the top and front bezels are removable. Behind the former, one can see the huge 200mm fan. At full speed, this baby pulls 0.42A, for a power consumption of 5.04W. There is room for a second one as well. In between both are small holes meant to attach two water-cooling radiators on top of each other, using two small steel parts included in the accessories. Toward the front are the connectivity and fan controller boards. The latter has five channels, each supporting two fans. Each of them can also handle up to an amazing 20W, for a total of 100W! Many dedicated fan controllers don't even go as high as this. All fans plug into it using a 3-pin connector. The leftmost connector is for the front fan, and thus for the stock configuration is left empty. That front fan can be either a 140mm or 120mm. It will suck air up through the front mesh.

The NZXT Phantom also features tool-less designs for both the 5.25" and 3.5" drive bays. The one for the optical disc drives has a small lock in the middle to make sure it stays in place. Two metal pins simply fit in the drive's screw holes, holding it firmly. It's the same thing for hard drives, except the metal pins are held by rubber pieces to diminish vibration. Those "drawers" clip in the cage, with the connectors on the opposite side. This way, cables can be routed from behind and not be apparent. Unfortunately, none of the 5.25" bays can be adapted to support a 3.5" device like a memory card reader, and no room has been designated for 2.5" storage devices.

A large collection of screws is supplied with the Phantom. There are also two small steel pieces that, as mentioned earlier, are used to attach a second water-cooling radiator to the top of the case. A small speaker as well as the user's guide are included. For connectivity, it features the usual power and reset buttons, the power and hard drive LEDs, the USB 2.0, HD audio/ AC'97, and the eSATA connectors as seen on the top of the case. The molex connector is what feeds the fan controller and all of its fans. The three 3-pin extensions are for reaching the fans in the side panel. With the stock configuration, the one for the big fan will remain unused. The other two must be connected to the 120mm fan's connectors.

As one can see, there is lots of room to work with in the Phantom, especially once the second hard drive cage has been removed. That's an HD 5870 in there, so really all imaginable graphics cards will fit without any problem. One thing that would have been great to see is an eighth expansion slot for motherboards having a PCI-E x16 slot all the way to the bottom such as the MSI 890FXA-GD70. In this case, a dual-slot graphics card cannot be installed all the way to the bottom. The power supply is jacked up quite a bit also, so lowering it would have made enough room for that eighth slot, and furthermore it would have taken more of its air through the mesh and filter meant for this use.