NZXT Phantom Enthusiast Steel Full Tower Chassis Review

Installation
Since I won’t be installing seven drives I decided to remove the smaller hard drive cage. Thinking this would a two second removal turned into removing six screws on the side panel and four screws on the bottom of the case. At least you know it’s well secured! Some other easy removable parts are the front bezel and the top bezel.

Motherboard installation is pretty simple. Just install the black standoffs and secure the motherboard with screws (be sure to check the user-guide to know which screw you should be using). The Phantom supports the following cases: E-ATX, ATX, MICRO-ATX, and BABY AT; we used an ATX board for this installation.

The next step is to install your power supply (at least according to NZXT’s User Guide). It’s a pretty simple task.

Installing expansion cards is also enjoyable. My geek-strong hands were unable to remove the thumbscrews by hand so I had to resort to using a screwdriver. Since there is a lip overlapping the expansion slots, NZXT has placed holes exactly where you need them to remove the screws by screwdriver.  After removing two slots I was able to install my XFX GTS 250 and fasten it with the two thumbscrews by hand.

While removing the front bezel isn’t necessary for installation, it is nice to get a look underneath it. Something to note for those buying the case is that there is no fan included for the front of the case, unlike most other cases. However the air support for your hard drives is provided by the two side panel 120mm fans, located right next to the drive cages. To install a 5.25” drive all you have to do is remove the bay cover by simply releasing the latch on the right side and pulling it out.

Then all you have to do is slide your drive in, unlatch the tool-free device which requires pressing the small NZXT button to the right, pulling out on the device, sliding your drive in, pushing the device back towards the case to secure it in position and then locking the latch to make sure it’s extra secure. You could probably install three drives by the time you read those instructions; it’s easier to do than to explain.

Installing a hard drive was more time consuming than I thought. While the method is pretty easy: just removing a drive cage and sliding the driver over the four rubber grommet screws. Unfortunately it was more difficult than I thought. Getting one side is was easy; it was just securing the other side that was the problem.

I thought you’d be able to easily slide both sides on, but the tray was made of a hard plastic so it wasn’t very malleable. Removing the screws isn’t really an option because the rubber grommets holding them have to be secured into place by sliding from a larger hole (not aligned with the drives) to a smaller hole.

Once you get everything together the case looks pretty nice, especially if you manage your cables. While I won’t say that I’m the greatest cable manager, I do think that I made the inside of the case look pretty neat. I wouldn’t say the same for the backside of the motherboard tray.

The case has a nice blue illumination on top from the HDD/power activity LEDs, to the top 200mm blue LED fan (which can be shut off remember), and the lit up fan controllers.