NZXT Phantom Premium Gaming Case Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
3,288 words · ~16 min read
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the Phantom is here I have received
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endless requests to unbox and uh do a
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first look video first impressions video of this case it is NZ xt's
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most probably most anticipated case ever
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so the first thing we're going to do is break the seals now this is an
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evaluation unit so it's not quite the
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fit and finish of the product that's actually going to be available on retail
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shelves so like it's mostly done but
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there's a couple little things like you might find the side panel doesn't fit
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quite right etc etc uh so the tooling is
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not quite there yet but let's take a
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quick look at the outside of the box before we actually open it I know
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everyone's very excited to see this thing here we go so we have external 5
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and Quin Bays five we have seven internal 3 and 1/2 in bays and then we
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have a standard 18 x s expansion slots
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on the top we have a 140 mm spot on the
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top oh sorry in the front we have a 140 mm spot in the top we have 2X 200 mm
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with one included in the rear we have one 120 mm included and on the side we
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have 1 200 or 230 mm and two 120 mm and
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those are included okay clearance we can accept up to uh 35 cm long video card so
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that's quite long that's like what 13 1/2 in or something like that anything
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out there basically CPU support is
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uh 180 mm assuming you're not using the
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side fan and that pretty much takes care of everything here it's available in red
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black and white but black and white are the only colors that are going to be
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available right off the bat in terms of the other features ample room for wire
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management that's one of the things that's got people really talking about
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this case as well as the eatx support it has a nice roomy interior so you can
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actually see it right here it looks kind of like storm stormtrooper armor actually it's a pretty pretty cool color
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scheme with mostly white and then black accents very neat it also includes okay
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you got the seven cooling fans with the option of up to three large 200 mil fans
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and this is cool because this really ties into how they've got the 200 mm fan
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holes in the case you can support up to 5 20 wat channel uh
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fans on the controller you have a fan controller that supports up to 20 watt
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fans per channel so that's very very
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cool because it means you can support big fans fans that move a lot of air and
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you can actually do it with the fan controller that's built right into the
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case here's uh pictures of the two other colors so the one we have here today I
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believe is white uh seven hard drive screwless rails with SSD support and
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screwless 5 and 1/4 in design so mostly
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tooless but we'll have a look at the case itself very shortly here and we'll
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uh we'll definitely talk in more detail about all the Innovations found
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within packaging is really good this is so important because unless you're
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buying the case at a retail store which I hope you're not because you should be
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buying it at ncx H it's important that the case
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actually survives its trip to you so NZXT has ample foam packaging built in
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around the case you can see they've got it molded to the shape of the top of the
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case itself here looks really really good this is a nice sturdy closed cell
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foam very very important for ensuring that your case is going to
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arrive in one piece same thing for the bottom very nice all custom fitted You'
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be surprised how few cases come adequately packed because while it may
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be enough for the case to ship on its own what if you ever have to ship a full
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system built in the case it becomes quite a bit
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heavier all right so let's take the protective plastic off and that is very
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very nice look at that cameraman come
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get this angle over here right here I'm pointing with my finger where the
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cameraman needs to go oh it blocks the light if you a oh okay hold on here I'll
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adjust it for you Soh there we go so
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that is just a bright white you know what compared to the photos it really
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does look way more like stormtrooper armor here than it does uh than it does
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in the in the pictures so here's our five 5 and 1/4 in Bays you've got these
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cool little uh tabs so cameraman can you zoom in so you can have a look at how
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these tabs work you just press the press the little button right there and it
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opens it right up so you don't have any uh any stupid metal blocking things once
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you've taken these off that's it that's the whole procedure now the case is made
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of plastic but it's a very very heavy plastic and it feels very solid so you
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look at like little things okay like the inside of the front door you've got uh
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like a a matte plastic cover on the
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inside of the plastic plastic outer piece so you've got these layers that's
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what gives it a rigidity that you wouldn't normally expect from a plastic
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case the hinge is also got uh large pegs
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so they're not going to just uh come out okay the door closes very very tidy
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so the the fit and finish even though this is a pre-production sample as I
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mentioned before is perfect on the front door uh the only reason there's finger
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prints all over it are from me touching it here but they wipe off quite easily
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another thing that we should probably talk about actually is fingerprint
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resistance of a finish like this because it is quite shiny the white color is
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really good for hiding it you can actually see that already here on the
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camera cuz I'm putting my hands all over it and we are not
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running sorry about that my camera battery ran out so okay fingerprint
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resistance looks to be very very good at least on the white color let's start
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having a look at some of the features so right here we've got our fan controllers
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so this is uh conveniently coated now I
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I don't know what they all mean but I'm going to guess that this one with the two big holes in it is maybe the two big
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ones on the top I mean you can play around with it and figure out what they all are but there you are that's where
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all of that is connected then on the other side we've got our power reset uh
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we've got our LED indicators we have an eata 2 USB 2.0 a mic Port as well as a
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headphone Port all right so that's pretty straightforward and let's start
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let's have a look at the side panels because I think that's actually pretty
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no wait we're not quite done with the front okay cameraman if you want to come down here and have a look that's where
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your 140 mm fan Mount is through that mesh right there so you can see these
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meshes even though they uh from a bit of
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a distance they're they're very uh they're a very solid black so they give
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you kind of a a nice patterned appearance to the whole case they're
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very free flowing so if you get close you can see through it quite well and
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that means that you're going to get lots of air flow traveling through them which is very very good of course Okay so so
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let's move on to the side let's start with this side just arbitrarily this
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side so this side has uh mesh holes here
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so you can see through to the hard drive cages there you can see the back of the
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motherboard plate there and uh we'll find out what those holes are although
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I'll assume that they're for power supply cable management and uh we've got
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a thumb screw back here so why don't I go ahead and show you that so the back
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is held on by optionally up to three thumb screws but this just comes with
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one which is fine because really unless you're trying to uh I don't know keep
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a you know cat or something out of your case you don't need to worry about too
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many screws holding on the side panel so there's the side panel itself in terms
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of the Finish you can see it's uh just a white paint so this part's metal
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obviously so you can see the inside there okay but the white paint finish on
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the metal actually matches the white plastic finish on the plastic perfectly
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so you don't have to worry about like a a contrast in between those okay so that
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side panel you know what we'll have a closer look at that after let's have a look at the back we've got a 120 mil fan
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here standard ATX layout here and room
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for a standard ATX power supply here so that's all pretty straightforward we
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have up to four water cooling tubing grommets uh all along the back of the
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case and let's go ahead and look at the other side panel before we take it open
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uh take it apart and look at the inside so here we've got our huge 200 or 30 mm
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fan Mount and then we have two I believe
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those are 140s help me out here on the
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side two 120s ah you know what I bet
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that's what that code is for the two two circles next to each other oh
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well it's okay all right so we'll take
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off our other wow these are long thumb screws check this out can you see that
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like huge thumb screws okay let's take that off so the
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side panel comes up just just like that there we go like I said fit and finish
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might not be quite right because this is not uh not a retail case so here's the
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two fans that are included there they're NZXT black and white fans so I'm going
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to go ahead and put this panel down as soon as the cameraman's done staring at
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that fan and then we'll have a look at the inside so this is a very roomy
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interior all right we've got a uh an
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accessory box here we've got our 7 3 and
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1/2 in uh Drive Mount here so why don't we have
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a look at how this system works uh this is oh you know what I like this system
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this is uses a rubber grommet so here I'll hold this in the Sun so you can see
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it so you basically just push the little metal pieces out push them all out you
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slip in your hard drive you push them back in and it seems flexible now but
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once you get a hard drive in there it's actually much much sturdier it's you've
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also got the holes here for a 2 and 1/2 in drive so then all you do is slide
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that in there and boom your hard drive is installed very very very very simple
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okay in terms of the 5 and 1/4 in you unlock them here and then oh that's kind
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of neat check that out okay come come come look at this this is cool okay so
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you just slide the lock and then it's
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actually like a little flexible piece of
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plastic and that's what uh that's what drives the spikes into the side of the
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drive can you see those spikes so you just bend it up and then bend it back
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down and then lock it and then it doesn't go anymore that's pretty cool
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I've never seen one quite like that before all right let me just take out
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this uh twist tie here that was holding in our accessory box and let's have a
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look at what else we've got here so you got room for quite a long power supply
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although not entirely Unlimited in terms
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of length and you can mount your power supply one of two ways they have a uh uh
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here there's a filter at the bottom here so you can have either a filtered intake
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at the bottom or you can flip your power supply around the other way and have it
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uh take in case air although I definitely recommend this because
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they've got these rubber mounts here that'll keep your power supply Supply
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elevated off the bottom of the case and with the filtered intake that's
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definitely going to be your best option it supports up to eatx motherboards so
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that means you can go all the way over to here with a very very large
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potentially dual socket motherboard if you felt like it you've got a CPU cutout
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that's going to support most motherboard CPU locations so that means that you can
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take off uh large Tower heat sinks or water blocks and put them back on
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without taking the motherboard out of the case here's our 120 mil fan let's
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have a look into the top of the case here
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all right so there's our 200 mil cooling fan and there's our spot for another one
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this one is filtered and this one does not appear to be filtered although I
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couldn't tell you why at this time oh
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it's possible that it's because the way this is set up is uh for negative air
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flow right now so that's why the uh open intakes are actually filtered that would
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be my that would be my educated guess
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okay and let's see what else that we want to uh take a look at here now 140
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mm intake comes in here uh let me just
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have a quick look at where those so these 200 or these 120 mm fans here are
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blowing all over your drives and they're also bringing air into the front where
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it can then be drawn across the video cards and hopefully you have rear
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exhaust video cards I really think that would be optimal for a case like this
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let me see what else we should do but don't we have a look at the
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included accessories so pull out my tech tips knife that I now actually carry
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almost at all times I cut my with it the other day check this out I tried to
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close it I was like closing it like I don't know how I did it but I managed to
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close it like right onto my right onto my nail it didn't hurt that much but uh
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well there you go knives are dangerous be very careful with them etc
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etc okay what do we have so here is a
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little metal bracket two metal
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brackets okay this is
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uh screws long
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screws okay here's some cable ties as well as a
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PC speaker because there's no integrated speaker into the case so you just plug a
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little speaker thing into the top of your motherboard and here is all the
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screws that we will potentially need to assemble our system all black screws I
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love it those little touches that is what really sets apart a premium case
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from a a me2 case so those are your 632
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screws so those are your hard drive screws all right here's your mother
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board standoffs here's your 632 screws flat so
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those ones are probably for installing something presumably motherboard
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although there's not enough of them there's only eight okay so I don't
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actually know what those are for then we have 632 longer ones okay I'm sure there
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is an instruction manual well there is an instruction manual and I'm sure it tells us what to do all with all these a
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bunch of thumb screws so there's a little baggie of thumb screws cool and
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then here we have some fan screws
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here we have some 632 hex screws so
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those I'm presuming are for the power supply and then we have some M3 screws
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so those would be used for optical drives if we uh wanted to double secure
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the optical drive so you can see you can use the little flexi Mount thing here
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and then there's also two screw holes right in the front which the cameraman
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cannot see from that angle but he'll try and cameraman wants me to look at the
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back of the case for some reason anyway that's where those screws go and oh
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right we haven't looked at the back of the case yet that's why the cameraman's uh pointing over there so here's all of
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the included cables this is getting to be quite a
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long video but hopefully you can uh bear with me here here's power for your fan
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controller this uses nice beefy wires because you are providing up to 20 watts
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per Channel or maybe it's 20 watts total either way it can proide power to some
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pretty decent fans so I wouldn't worry too much about it hard drive LED so
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there's all your front connectors nice black cable happy to see that we've got
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a eSATA front connector right there and then what else do we have here we've got
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HD audio there's a USB header and these
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are nicely sleeved black and then we've got a couple of uh oh right these are
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for uh the three aspects of the fan
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controller that are not located up here so the ones that are not already plugged
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in so you can see we've got uh two more up here so there's your five five leads
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off the integrated fan controller just like that okay well I think that pretty
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much covers everything I wanted to talk about get one more dramatic shot of the
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front here because I really think that is what stands out about this case more
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than anything else is the look of it from the front and kind of seeing the
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top as well thank you for checking out my unboxing of the NZXT Phantom I hope
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you've enjoyed it I certainly have I can already tell you these are going to sell
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like hot cakes