NZXT presents the cutting edge Phantom Full Tower Chassis. Designed with sleek, pristine contours, the Phantom delivers high performance cooling advantages with 7 fan cooling options, dual radiator support, quad watercooling cutouts, and five 20W per channel fan controls. An innovative 5.25″ screwless system vast space to encompass 7 hard drives, and five 5.25″ bays enable smooth customization.
$ 119.99
[wpramareviews asin=”B003WE9WQO”]
Great case,
Pros:
Looks great, i like the design, elegant but not too flashy.
Lots of room for cable management.
Onboard fan controller.
Cons:
DO buy the NZXT 200mm fan is you wish to install the two addition 200mm fans. Other brands(such as CM) will NOT fit in.
Not enough room for the side 200mm fan if a large cpu heatsink is installed (see my pics which i used a Scythe Mugen 2).
You have to keep the intake fans running faster than the exhaust ones to overpressure your case to prevent dust.
calculation here (assuming all 7 fans are installed):
NZXT 120mm fan: 47CFM
NZXT 140mm fan: 62.5CFM
NZXT 200mm fan: 166CFM
intake=47+47+62.5+166=322.5
exhaust=47+166+166=379
you will get a -56.5CFM if all fans are at stock speed.
So save your money and forget about the additional top 200mm exhaust fan.
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|The Amazing Case,
I’ve been using this case for about a month and I’m a huge fan. I’d never heard of NZXT before but the reviews for this case caught my eye and I figured it was worth a shot. It definitely was. Coming from an hp media center case was like night and day, literally. This case is black and the hp case is white… The night is a bit bigger but not by much, and the phantom has better aesthetics, airflow, and cable management.
Pros:
a: The case is very spacious. It’s tall and long so you don’t have to worry about fitting your graphics card. My Radeon HD6950 has about 3 or 4 inches of room between the rear of the card and the drive bays.
b: Lots of fan ports: 2 192mm fans on top pump out hot air, a side port allows you to blow on your graphics card and motherboard, and front/side fans blow on your hard drives. All this makes for a cool system.
c: Integrated fan controller. Very nice for regulating your fans manually; you no longer have to worry about PWM and whatnot. Very convenient if using for both gaming and home theater.
d: Lots of angles; this is a very sexy case and very distinctive. If you like having a unique system, this case may be for you.
e: Very large. Yes, this was covered in a, but only with respect to room for interior components. There are other benefits as well. Upon first seeing this case, my 5’2″ girlfriend commented that if an armed intruder were to enter the house, she could hide behind the case and have a reasonable chance of escaping unscathed. I agreed, and added that if I removed the hard drive bays, I could fit her into it and send her to NZXT for warranty support.
Alas, every product has cons. Here they are for this case:
a: The major con is the width of the case and/or positioning of the rear outlet fan. This is due to the fact that with either a large air cooler or a corsair h50/h70 water cooler, you will not be able to fit the 200mm fan into the side panel. Trust me, I tried. When I attached a 200mm fan to the side, my h70 occupied the second quadrant (pi/2 – pi for those mathematically inclined) of the fan as seen from outside the case. There really is no way to get around this; if you move the fan any lower you overlap with the motherboard output ports. I solved this by taking 2 120mm fans, taping them together using gorilla tape, and then using metal wire to attach them to the screw holes. I also drilled a hole in one corner to solidly screw in the assembly; it holds very well and performs admirably. It’s placed in the lower half of the fan port and blows air directly onto my graphics card.
b: Doesn’t come with all of the fans installed. You have to pay to get the rest of the fans. There’s plenty of airflow even without the extra fans if you don’t want to pay though.
c: The LED button on the rear allows you to turn off the fan LED, but not the power/HDD or fan controller LEDs.
d: The door can bother some people but I don’t mind it
e: USB ports are on top of the case which decreases their range by a few inches compared to front mounted ports. It also makes it a bit of a hassle to put in a USB if you’re like me and put it into a media shelf where the shelf panel is only a couple inches above the top of the case.
f: The fully built system is a bit heavy, but nothing unmovable. I’m a 5’5″ college kid and I had no trouble moving it from my house to my 3rd floor apartment.
g: The latch system for taking off the side panel isn’t well thought out. It’s hard to explain but the latches on the inside aren’t firmly attached and it’s easy to dislodge them, causing the spring to fall off. In this manner, the spring for the latch fell into my power supply. I bent an uncoated wire into a tweezer shape and started digging around inside the PSU to get it out. I think about 10 seconds passed before I realized how bad of an idea this was. Believe it or not, I’m actually an honors student. Fortunately, I survived the experience and was able to post this review. I recommend just unscrewing all the screws rather than using the latch.
Although I listed more cons than pros, the magnitude of the pros greatly outweighs that of the cons and I thoroughly recommend this case to anyone. I really like it and you will too.
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|NZXT Phantom – Incredible ATX Case,
Pros:
– HUGE (Pics do not do it justice)
– SEVEN case fan slots (2 200mm on top, one 200/230mm on side, two 120 mm on side, one 120 mm exhaust, one 140 mm front)
– INCREDIBLE Cable Management using included (and well placed for ATX Mobo) Grommets, Cable Ties, etc.
– VISUALLY APPEALING (i.e. – SEXY! lol jk)
Cons:
– Case only comes with four fans (back exhaust, top back 200mm LED, two side 120mms). You need to buy the other three. 🙁 nr a big deal, as the included fans are probably sufficient
– Case fans make a *BARELY* (and I stress BARELY) audible humming noise (they are fans, I guess). I don’t consider myself a fan noise prude, but the noise is just barely there when running stock fans at full speed. Luckily, one can slow them down a tad using the built-in fan-controller 🙂 Also, if you are going to buy another 200mm fan or two for the case, I’m BEGGING you to please buy NZXT’s LED 700RPM 200mm fan (exact same one as the Phantom came with). Their “Performance Fan” is SUPER-Loud even at lower RPMs and makes the system as a whole considerably noisier.
Other Thoughts: I had the all-white version of this at my university in Los Angeles, and I decided that, over the summer, I would carefully pack up my CPU (i7-2600k), RAM, PSU, and SSD in my suitcase (probably ill-advised but w/e) and take it home with me (to PA). I got home, ripped out the guts of my old build (a Phenom x4 based system), and shoved the hardware in my old case. But, I realized, I missed the Phantom. Not to mention, my younger sister was slaving away on an old Celeron (*shivers*) based system. So, voila, instant solution! Extort money out of my parents for the purpose of “getting my sister a new computer” (i.e. – throwing old hardware back in old case), and really use it to buy myself this case for my new Sandy Bridge hardware. Win-Win!
Returning to the point though, the red-white theme is AWESOME. The back LED fan is, in fact, RED, and not ORANGE (as Newegg reports), nor BLUE (as Amazon originally reported). I also stuck a 2-m set of NZXT Red LED lights (purchased on Amazon for ~$20) in the case for added effect and WOW! I’m definitely rockin my Phightin Philadelphia Phillies color scheme now LOL. If anything, this is even BETTER than my original Phantom, as the back exhaust fan screw holes have been pre-modded to ensure that installation of, say, a Corsair H70, will not preclude one from having a top back 200mm fan installed (though the side 200mm still won’t fit).
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