NZXT Phantom 410 Mid Tower Chassis Review

If you haven’t already heard of the insanely popular NZXT Phantom, then we have to query where you have been for the past year! Just in case you have been away from the computing scene for over a year, we will give you a short breakdown of the success of the legendary NZXT Phantom. Released 12 months ago, the Phantom was one of the first full tower cases to inspire a new design trend. Gone are the days of a full tower case being big, ugly and a cumbersome chunk of metal. The unique design and bold colour scheme were what made the Phantom different from anything we had previously encountered. As we all know though, a striking appearance and aesthetically pleasing design are nothing if the performance isn’t up to scratch. Thankfully, NZXT’s Phantom excelled in terms of expandability, cooling performance, internal clearance, cable management and ease of use. It is available for around £110 and offers almost everything an enthusiast could ask for, so it is no surprise that it has won a plethora of awards and accolades including our own eTeknix gold award.

The Phantom 410 isn’t a direct replacement to its full tower sibling. Instead, NZXT decided that releasing a mid tower variant would be a better choice as it could coincide on the market with its full tower brother while appealing to a slightly different target audience. Enough about the original Phantom though. Times change quickly and even the best of products require an upgrade once in a while to allow them to appeal to an even broader target audience.

A mid tower form factor gives NZXT less room to play with when designing their case. You would be wrong if you assumed that this space constraint would force the Phantom 410 to cut down on features. It possesses 3 tool-less internal 5.25” bays, 6 internal 3.5/2.5” bays, 4 of which are located in a removable cage and 7 PCI expansion slots. Cooling comes in the form of a single 120mm intake fan and a pair of exhaust fans, one of which is 120mm, the other a 140mm LED version, located in the rear and top mounting locations. A whopping 8 fans can be installed in the Phantom 410, 5 of which can be 140mm versions, which is extremely impressive given its mid tower size. Each fan can be controlled by the integrated 30W 3-step fan controller, eliminating the need for an additional accessory. Clearance shouldn’t be an issue as the Phantom 410 supports up to 305mm/12.2” long VGA cards, 170mm/6.8” tall CPU coolers and 25mm/1” of rear routed cables.

Moving to the general usage features, we see NZXT include a pair of USB 3.0 ports on the front panel which connect to an internal USB 3.0 header. The HDD cage is accessible from the case’s right side, not the left. NZXT claim that this design change will allow for “easy hard drive replacement” but we will see if this is the case. Rubber grommets are used to cover each cable management hole, a technique which was implemented in the original Phantom with great success. One of the biggest and possibly most ‘hate it or love it’ design changes is the implementation of an acrylic side panel window. Some users will love the possibility of being able to see inside their active computer while others will hate it. The NZXT Phantom 410 should be available for around £84.99/€99.90/$99.99. A 2 year warranty is available as standard and the colours available are black, red and white.

Can NZXT’s new Phantom 410 continue on the success path its bigger brother has paved?