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.
After all this time it’s still a nice case but when you compare it to their new 630 it’s obvious NZXT are fast learners.
I like so much its shape! 🙂