Closer Look: Exterior

At first glance, I'm completely satisfied with the NZXT Phantom's external appearance. In fact, I'm thoroughly impressed. The clean lines and high-gloss paint job definitely provide for a professional, attractive look. As you can imagine, and as you'll see throughout the review, though, that paint job loved to attract finger printers. It also reflected just about everything around it--not really con in the real world, but a pain to photograph at times!

The image above highlights some of the exterior styling of the Phantom. The front and top panels are composed of plastic, while the sides and rear of the case are metal. A number of metal screens populate the various panels to provide ventilation while helping to keep dust out. Additionally, the entire front bezel has been designed for easy removal to allow for the installation of a 140mm front fan (not included).

The absence of the front fan shouldn't affect most builds and probably helps keep the cost down a bit. Instead, two 120mm fans attached to the front portion of the side panel take on the task of pushing fresh air into the case. Turning our attention to the side of the case, we can see these fans in a bit more detail.

In addition to the two 120mm fans built into the side panel, NZXT provides Phantom users with the option of mounting a 200mm or 230mm fan on the side of the case. It's positioned to provide fresh air directly to the graphics card(s). As you'll see a bit later on when we open the case up, wiring for this side fan is already included and routed to the fan controller.

The rear view of the Phantom reveals yet another fan. The 120mm rear fan, like all of the others, comes prewired to the integrated fan controller. Also worth pointing out here are the four watercooling pass-throughs built into the back panel. Watercooling appears to have been top priority for NZXT, not just here on the outside, but also on the inside, where it counts--more on this later.

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