NZXT Phantom 820 Full-Tower Chassis Review

Now that I have the system out of the box, we get our first look at the design. That being said the first things I noticed about this chassis were both its size and weight, this is no small system and well it well and requires a fair bit of effort to move around the room due its its robust build quality, overall size and heavy duty materials.

The side panel is full of style features, with a very cool looking side panel window offering a great view of the interior of the chassis, a welcome addition to a chassis that comes fitted out with an internal lighting system. Below the window we have a pair of ventilated panels which offer great airflow to the 200mm NZXT white fan that comes pre-installed and the raised sections of the mesh panel add to the overall style of the chassis.

The front panel comes fitted with a high quality door panel which covers the optical drive bays and other devices. This panel takes up half the height of the chassis and features a curved design that meets at a point in the middle, much like it did on the original Phantom chassis. Below that we have a custom shaped ventilation grille which covers another 200mm preinstalled fan that acts as the main air intake for the chassis.

If you look closely at the bottom of the front panel you can just about see the push/pull clip-in airfilter and below that the three angular shapes that form part of the plinth that the chassis stands upon. this plinth provides great stability to the chassis as well as good ground clearance for any base mounted cooling devices.

The front panel door is fairly thick, this will definitely assist with some sound proofing on the front of the chassis and help reduce noise from any optical drives you install. There four 5.25″ drive bays, each fitted with an easy to remove clip in cover thanks to the button mechanism on the left side of each cover. Each of these drive covers comes fitted with ventilation holes and a mesh finish, which help with airflow as well as add a little extra touch of style.

Just above the 5.25″ drive bays is where some of the more unique features of the Phantom 820 reside. There are controls here for the HUE lighting system, with buttons allowing you to switch between different modes of interior and exterior lighting on the chassis. There is a larger rotatable controller which allows you to cycle through seemingly endless colour combinations or of course disable the lighting all together. Hiding between the lighting controls you will also find a very handy SD card reader is built into the front of the chassis.

On the right side panel we find a huge recessed area, this allows for a lot more room behind the motherboard for cable management, the extra room makes the panel easier to reinstall once you have fitted all your cables and components.

Around the back of the chassis we find a large fan/radiator mounting area. Instead of the usual pre-drilled screw holes, we find vertical rectangles which allow you to mount your fans and other cooling sollutions at different heights. This mounting system allows for maximum compatibility with your cooling solutions, with the inner column allowing for 120mm width solutions and the outer providing 140mm solutions. As you can see there is a pre-installed 140mm NZXT fan which acts as the rear exhaust for the chassis.

There are 9 expansion slot covers, each comes with ventilation holes and are fully reusable thanks to their quick release screws on the interior of the chassis. To the right of the expansion slots we have a vertical column of four large water/cable routing cutouts and finally at the bottom we have the power supply mounting cutout. The PSU mounting cutout also helps to put the size of the chassis into perspective and demonstrates just how wide this chassis is, with the PSU only taking up around 50% of the total width of the chassis.

Just below the PSU mount you can also see a dark strip of plastic, this is the rear dust filter which can be clipped in and out with ease to allow for user friendly maintenance and cleaning.

Along the top of the chassis we find a very funky control panel, this features the usual power and reset buttons, headset input and output sockets and a strip of HUE lighting. The most important feature here though is the fan controller. The fan controller features a range of LED lights to show fan speed and channel selection, with a well designed and simple to use interface that allows you to control 12 fans, which are split into four groups. This gives you great flexibility over the cooling/noise levels from the system. With 12 fans being supported by the controller you shouldn’t have any problems controlling your entire cooling system from this panel. On the other side we have a simple lift off rubber dust cover, behind which you will find a range of USB 3.0 and 2.0 sockets.

Further back from the I/O area, we have a large ventilated area that will provide airflow to any fans or radiators you mount in the top of the chassis. There is also another 200mm fan pre-installed in the top rear of the chassis.

Underneath the chassis we have two large rails that support the rear of the chassis, these come fitted with long rubber feet which will help reduce any vibrations from the chassis. At the front of the chassis we have a large plinth style mount, this not only looks fantastic when the chassis is upright, but it also provides superb airflow to the underside of the chassis thanks to its shape and design. just behind the feet and stand for the chassis we can see clearly the range of dust filter, these cover the base cutouts for both the PSU and any internal base mounted cooling solutions.