NZXT Phantom Full Tower Chassis Review

Many of you will already be fairly familiar with the Phantom, no doubt many more of you have desired one of these chassis' for quite some time now also. NZXT have had a string of success with their current Phantom and Switch ranges, their flagship Phantom 820 recently earned one of our eTeknix awards and their Switch 810 and 810 SE both walked away with top honours too. "But the Phantom has been out ages now, so why review it so late in its life" I hear you asking me, well its as simple as can be, a quick look through the eTeknix database and we realized this one was missed out on. Although this chassis may have been around the block a few times, it's still just as popular as ever and with the price now around £70 for this premium grade chassis, there has never been a better time to actually buy one. The Phantom range has been built with one focus in mind, enthusiast gaming systems. Sure it can handle almost any kind of system you wish, but its extreme and unique style, as well as its component capabilities lend itself to high end gaming systems perfectly. So lets move on and see exactly what the Phantom Full Tower has to offer and see why I think the Phantom is just as special now as it was over two years ago. The Phantom comes well packed in a nicely designed box which features a full colour image of the chassis. Around the back of the box, things are a lot more detailed. With a side view of the interior of the chassis labelled with multi-language pointers for the major features and functions. The box also shows some of the other colours available. Also in the box I found a small box which contained plenty of high quality black motherboard stand-offs, screws, thumb screws and cable ties. More than enough to install all the test components with plenty to spare. Starting with the left side of the chassis it's immediately clear that the Phantom takes its cooling very seriously. The large fan mount comes with support for 200/230mm fans (not included). While the bottom right fan mounts support 2 x 120mm fans (included). The side panel also comes fitted with quick release thumb screws and a spring loaded screw that helps lock the panel in place even further. The side panels' angles and curves look fantastic and those twin fan grills will provide a lot of extra airflow to your components. The front of the chassis comes fitted with a custom shaped door which keeps the design flowing from front to back of the chassis. There is also room for an additional 140mm fan here (not included). Hiding behind the front door panel we find five 5.25" drive bay covers, each of which can be removed from the front for easy access. The door is really nicely made and adds nicely to the premium look and feel of the chassis. Along the top of the chassis we have a red detailing around the top fan grilles and again running up the front panel to the fan controller panel. It's easily one of the better equipped front panels on the market even today, with your reset, power and status lights on the left. These are followed by e-Sata, USB 3.0, USB 2.0, headset and microphone ports. One of the coolest features though is the inclusion of a built in 5 channel fan controller which uses sliders to control your fan speed and is nicely labelled to detail the separate sections of the chassis that each slider controls. The right side panel is the most simple throughout the chassis, yet it still features some further ventilation, this will help airflow from the left sides twin 120mm fans to travel throughout the chassis. There is plenty going on underneath the Phantom too, with extra long feet to provide both extra stability and some serious ground clearance to feed both the filtered PSU air intake and the twin air intakes on the right (these are directly below each hard drive bay). The only think I don't like is that the PSU filter is a clip-on, so you really need to get under your chassis to access it, of course a slide out design would have been preferred for ease of access. Around the back of the chassis we find the NZXT Phantoms light switch tucked away above the motherboard back plate cut-out, which will shine an LED light to help you find those ever so tricky USB ports behind your computer. Next to that we have a pre-installed 120mm exhaust fan, 4 watercooling / cable routing cut-outs, each fitted with high quality rubber grommets and 7 ventilated expansion slot covers, each finished in a high contrast black. With the side panel removed we can see a decent size cut-out on the back plate, this will help with CPU cooler installations. To the right of that we have four small cable management cut-outs as well as a bigger cutaway at the bottom for the cables from your PSU. In the top of the chassis we have two 200mm filtered air intakes, with one pre-installed 200mm fan although many users have fitted radiators here, its worth checking with each manufacturer to ensure compatibility. In the rear of the chassis we can better see the pre-installed 120mm exhaust fan, below that we see that each of the 7 expansion slot covers come fitted with quick release thumb screws, great for quickly installing graphics cards or swapping out components. At the bottom of the chassis we have a PSU cut-out and some sturdy rubber feet for the PSU to rest on, this should help avoid scratching and vibrations. The five 5.25" drive bays each come with a quick release mechanism, but so does just about every other component on this chassis, very handy if you like to swap components on a regular basis. Below that we have 5 hard drive trays that support both 3.5" and 2.5" drives. then we have a further two hard drive trays on the left. This allows for extra storage, but also leaves room for long graphics cards in a multi-GPU setup. Here you can see the reverse of the left side panel, the pre-installed 120mm fans and the 200/230mm side fan mount. The install time for the Phantom was a little over 20 minutes, which is pretty snappy and so it should be with all those quick release mechanisms and thumb screws. As I expected, there were no conflicts with our test components and the Antec 920 CPU cooler and radiator went in without any issues. The cable management cut-outs on the phantom are quite narrow, but its more than enough for the components installed today and there are still two of the cut-outs completely unused. There is plenty of clearance between the top fan and the radiator, as well as the radiator and the CPU cooling block, so airflow should flow nicely throughout, there is plenty of room for airflow to our GTX 560 Ti also, helped further by those ventilated expansion slot covers. Our Kingston SSD is barely visible in the left hard drive rack, but on the plus side it does look neat and tidy and that's always a welcome addition in an system build. Around the back of the system everything is as I expected it would be, neat, tidy and very clean looking. A solid performance from the Phantom and I wouldn't have expected anything less from the Phantom range, or NZXT for that matter. While sure its not as spectacular in terms of scale and features as the new Phantom 820, it does still reach a high standard that you would want in any premium quality chassis. You get most of the features of the Phantom 820 but at less than half the price. The style on the Phantom is a tricky one, I personally think it looks fantastic but on the other hand it would look ridiculous next to my desk. Some people love the "in your face", almost futuristic approach to the chassis design that you find on the Phantom, not to mention a full tower finished in gloss white doesn't exactly go unnoticed. For the most part though, the style and features of this chassis serve a purpose too, providing extra space for after market cooling solutions such as fans and water cooling radiators. This chassis can hold some serious hardware and it doesn't take a long search on Google to turn up literally hundreds of amazing gaming systems that put this chassis to good use. Its also proved itself popular with many chassis modification enthusiasts too, something NZXT have been happy to play along with by supplying an after market windowed side panel, perfect for those that love to not only show off their new components, but also enjoy taking a peek through the perspex window themselves. After spending a few hours playing around with this chassis, it's easy to see why it was so popular upon its release and why it remains so even today. It has compatibility for all the latest hardware, multiple graphics cards, extreme levels of cooling thanks to its plentiful air intakes and fan / radiator mounts, it looks fantastic (if a little extreme for some) and it does all this for around £70. This is something that is hard to do with most new chassis' on the market and its why I am happy to award the Phantom Full Tower with our eTeknix Bang For Buck Award. Upon its release this chassis would have been an eTeknix Editor's Choice winner, but it has been superseded by newer models and while they do cost more, they are better, the Editor's Choice Award is about the stuff we love, not just value for for money.