NZXT Phantom Case Review

The case has a very shiny look to it, thanks to a coat of auto-quality paint.  The bright white is contrasted with black modders mesh, which allows airflow into the case.    The front of the case has a swinging molded plastic door, which conceals any 5.25″ peripherals such as a blu-ray drive.  If you have a lot of fan controllers or other displays, then you might not want to conceal them, but honestly I don’t know many people who use up any bays other than their optical drive.

The top of the case has a very interesting angular shape to it, and has a few little goodies.  Not only are there two 120mm exhaust fans, but it also has headphone and microphone jacks (thankfully without those horrid pink and puke-green color rings to indicate which port is which), two USB 2.0 ports, an eSATA port, hard drive activity and power LEDs, and a power button.   One of the best features of the case is a built-in fanbus, which has an interesting shape and uses icons to indicate the fan position in the case.

 The side panel has three air intake holes.  Two of them are a “smaller” 120mm fans, while a much larger 230mm fan takes up the rest of the space.

The back of the case has a typical 120mm exhaust fan, which includes a white NZXT fan.  There are four grommeted holes that you can use for various intake-output cables or tubes, such as water-cooling tubes or USB cables that need access to the rear of the case.  The I/O panel has the typical 7 card slots and standard motherboard cutout.

  

There is also a standard area to accept most major computer power supplies, and the bottom has rubber standoffs to keep your PSU from scratching the case.  Many power supplies utilize a large 140mm intake fan to push air through the unit, and since many cases now place the PSU on the bottom, it’s great that NZXT has created some space between the case and the power supply.