nzxt phantom 820 water cooling optimal layout

Earthmonger - Monday, Octolink This is the sort of case you'd find under a 40 year-old business professional's desk.It would therefore be useful to me if that info was more consistently included in reviews and in a predictable place.Īgain though, I do appreciate the watercooling info making it in period, even if new info doesn't seem wholly appropriate in a conclusion. It's very helpful for me at least to know how practical watercooling will be with a case even if I don't place to use it that way since it helps put some design decisions in perspective ('that case isn't bad, it's just designed around space for rads'). I would however like to humbly request the author consider putting watercooling info in an earlier part of the case review, perhaps the 'in and around' section when describing the interior arrangement of the case. I was pleased to see the note about watercooling in the conclusion, since as soon as I saw 'NZXT' I though 'watercooling' from my association with the Switch 810 as a great watercooling case. Sunrise089 - Monday, Octolink Thanks for the review.POST A COMMENT 24 Comments View All Comments The aforementioned mess of cables can also be difficult to cope with but again, I don't really know if they could've done much more to mitigate it, and it's worth the added complexity for the robust fan controller. I do think the drive cages and trays need to be redesigned and brought a bit more in line with contemporary designs similar to what Antec and Corsair are doing it seems like NZXT may have erred on the side of aesthetics when they should've gone for practicality.

Ignoring the fact that I'm a tiny man and the Phantom 820 is a heavy case, assembling our testbed inside it was easy enough, a process made much easier by the sorted screw keeper. It's worth noting that NZXT does give a healthy amount of lead for the side intake fan's power cable. NZXT does the best they can with a bad situation by at least labeling which channel each of the fan leads connects to and pre-connects the existing fans (outside of the side intake), but honestly it's just cable spaghetti and I'm not really sure how much more they could've done to mitigate it. I don't think it can really be helped, but it's awfully hard to sort some of it out. Routing power and data cables goes smoothly, and NZXT even includes an extension cable for the AUX 12V line, but what's amusing is how much of a mess all the cabling for the integrated peripherals of the Phantom 820 actually is. I also think it's unusual that they have to be installed on the side behind the motherboard tray instead of in front of it, and there doesn't seem to be any real reason as to why the case was designed this way. I found it was particularly difficult to keep the sled with the 2.5' drive screwed to the bottom in place, as it was easy to push too far into the drive cage. NZXT's promotional material talks about how these have been radically redesigned, but the funny thing is that they're just too flimsy. Where NZXT went off the rails a bit is, ironically, with the 2.5'/3.5' drive sleds. Having all of the screws conveniently in one place and organized made things go that much more swimmingly. It's not worth boring you with the details suffice to say installing the motherboard and optical drive went off basically without a hitch, same with the expansion card (expansion slot shields are ventilated and held in place with thumbscrews) and the power supply.

Nzxt phantom 820 water cooling optimal layout