NZXT Phantom Black E-ATX Full Tower Case Review

NZXT Phantom Full Tower Internal Impressions

If you thought the outside of the Phantom was a sight to behold, just wait till we get going on the inside. As with the rest of the case the inside is painted black. A quick run of my hands over all of

the surfaces reveals that there are no sharp edges to cut myself on in the next section where we actually install a computer into the NZXT phantom. But we will get to that later. I don’t know if I have

mentioned at all how much room there is inside the NZXT Phantom, and if I have… too bad. From firsthand experience I can tell you that you won’t be having many problems fitting your new gear into this

thing with the ability to hold video cards as large as 350mm and CPU coolers as high as 180mm without the side fan installed. And once you install those, there will probably be room for you and your luggage

as well.

There are five 5.25 drive bays that come with NZXT’s innovative screwless design mounting clips for your optical drives. But to say that the mounts are screwless is a matter of opinion, because yes, you

can install your optical drives with just these mounts holding them in, but they are going to move around a lot. In order to avoid this you need to install two of the provided screws into the opposite side of

the bay and your drives will be secure. To install your drives just simply pull back on the mount, slide your drive in, install the two screws I mentioned before and you are done.

Below the five 5.25″ bays are the 3.5″ drive bays; there are five of these as well. Each bay has its own screwless drive rails for easy installation. While you won’t need any tools to install the rails for

the 3.5″ drives, you will need to install 4 screws if you are going to mount 2.5″ solid state drives into your system. Right to the left of the 5 3.5″ drive bays are two more 3.5″ drive bays for a total of 7

3.5″ drive bays. So go ahead and make that massive RAID setup you have always wanted. All of the 3.5″ drive bays are oriented so that the back of the drives you install face the back of the case, thereby

making it really, really easy to hide the cables that run out of the back of your drives.

To the left of those two drive bays is where the power supply is mounted. As I mentioned, the NZXT Phantom has its power supply mounted at the bottom of the case. On the bottom of the case where the power

supply is mounted there is a fan grill type cutout on the bottom of the case to allow for adequate airflow to the power supply.

As we move up a bit inside the case we now come to the motherboard tray. The motherboard tray in the Phantom has the ability to hold E-ATX, ATX, Micro-ATX, and baby AT motherboards. All of the

motherboard mounts are clearly marked on the tray by letters that are stamped into the steel. Moving up from there we can see that the 120mm exhaust fan is installed at the top rear of the case and right above

that is the 200mm exhaust fan that vents hot air out of the top of the case.

One of the many killer features of the inside of the NZXT Phantom is the wire routing cutouts that are cut out of the motherboard tray. There are four of them and they are easily identified by their oval

shape and their rubber grommets. These cutouts are put there to help route your wiring in such a way that it is hidden out of sight. This, in turn, gives your case a much cleaner look and allows for maximum

airflow throughout the case. Moving around to the bottom side of the motherboard tray we can see that there is ample room for hiding all of your wiring; there is roughly 1″ of clearance between the bottom of

the motherboard tray and the side panel. And it is back here that we see the trunk of wires that runs through the case feeding wiring to the fan controller, the I/O ports, and all of the lighting and

switches that connect to your motherboard.

A quick look at the left side panel of the case shows us that there are two 120mm fans installed on the inside of the panel. When the panel is installed in place these fans are situated over the 3.5″

drive bays. This will help keep that massive RAID setup you were talking about building nice and cool all year long.

Well, that’s about enough of looking around on the inside of the NZXT Phantom. Let’s go ahead and start installing some parts inside this sucker.