NZXT Phantom ATX Full Tower Case - White (PHAN-001WT)

I've been using this case for about a month and I'm a huge fan. I'd never heard of NZXT before but the reviews for this case caught my eye and I figured it was worth a shot. It definitely was. Coming from an hp media center case was like night and day, literally. This case is black and the hp case is white... The night is a bit bigger but not by much, and the phantom has better aesthetics, airflow, and cable management.Pros:a: The case is very spacious. It's tall and long so you don't have to worry about fitting your graphics card. My Radeon HD6950 has about 3 or 4 inches of room between the rear of the card and the drive bays.b: Lots of fan ports: 2 192mm fans on top pump out hot air, a side port allows you to blow on your graphics card and motherboard, and front/side fans blow on your hard drives. All this makes for a cool system.c: Integrated fan controller. Very nice for regulating your fans manually; you no longer have to worry about PWM and whatnot. Very convenient if using for both gaming and home theater.d: Lots of angles; this is a very sexy case and very distinctive. If you like having a unique system, this case may be for you.e: Very large. Yes, this was covered in a, but only with respect to room for interior components. There are other benefits as well. Upon first seeing this case, my 5'2" girlfriend commented that if an armed intruder were to enter the house, she could hide behind the case and have a reasonable chance of escaping unscathed. I agreed, and added that if I removed the hard drive bays, I could fit her into it and send her to NZXT for warranty support.Alas, every product has cons. Here they are for this case:a: The major con is the width of the case and/or positioning of the rear outlet fan. This is due to the fact that with either a large air cooler or a corsair h50/h70 water cooler, you will not be able to fit the 200mm fan into the side panel. Trust me, I tried. When I attached a 200mm fan to the side, my h70 occupied the second quadrant (pi/2 - pi for those mathematically inclined) of the fan as seen from outside the case. There really is no way to get around this; if you move the fan any lower you overlap with the motherboard output ports. I solved this by taking 2 120mm fans, taping them together using gorilla tape, and then using metal wire to attach them to the screw holes. I also drilled a hole in one corner to solidly screw in the assembly; it holds very well and performs admirably. It's placed in the lower half of the fan port and blows air directly onto my graphics card.b: Doesn't come with all of the fans installed. You have to pay to get the rest of the fans. There's plenty of airflow even without the extra fans if you don't want to pay though.c: The LED button on the rear allows you to turn off the fan LED, but not the power/HDD or fan controller LEDs.d: The door can bother some people but I don't mind ite: USB ports are on top of the case which decreases their range by a few inches compared to front mounted ports. It also makes it a bit of a hassle to put in a USB if you're like me and put it into a media shelf where the shelf panel is only a couple inches above the top of the case.f: The fully built system is a bit heavy, but nothing unmovable. I'm a 5'5" college kid and I had no trouble moving it from my house to my 3rd floor apartment.g: The latch system for taking off the side panel isn't well thought out. It's hard to explain but the latches on the inside aren't firmly attached and it's easy to dislodge them, causing the spring to fall off. In this manner, the spring for the latch fell into my power supply. I bent an uncoated wire into a tweezer shape and started digging around inside the PSU to get it out. I think about 10 seconds passed before I realized how bad of an idea this was. Believe it or not, I'm actually an honors student. Fortunately, I survived the experience and was able to post this review. I recommend just unscrewing all the screws rather than using the latch.Although I listed more cons than pros, the magnitude of the pros greatly outweighs that of the cons and I thoroughly recommend this case to anyone. I really like it and you will too.

Looks -When scrolling through the pages of full size towers, I was immediately drawn to the look of the Phantom, and once I received it in the mail, I was not disappointed. Get compliments on it regularly. This thing has serious style without being too over the top.Noise -I'm currently running it with all stock fans, plus an additional 200 mm in the side position, and it is still extremely quiet. I've never had such a large case, so I was worried about it being loud but I've been extremely pleasantly surprised by how quiet it runs. Except under a heavy load, all you can hear is the quiet whoosh of air moving, you don't even hear the fans.Disk Space -This thing has a plethora of mounting brackets for hard/disk drives, honestly more than anyone should really need. I ended up removing the second internal bay, and that really opened up the bottom area near my PSU for cable space. The only complaint I have that's really not much of a complaint, is that if you try to mount hard drives with the cables running to the left (as you look at the front of it), they are directly against the two small fan mounts. The reason this isn't a complaint is this case offers excellent versatility for cable management, in the form of rubberized cutouts on the motherboard tray for you to run cables through, so just flip it around and you're good to go. I recommend decently flexible, 90 degree sata cables for your hard drives so they fit well in the case without having to bend them too much.Construction -It's built good and sturdy, the top and front are made of what seems to be good solid plastic, the door on the front is hinged and magnetized to keep it closed. The inside is sturdy and well constructed, I didn't have any out of place screws or brackets, and no scuffing or scratches anywhere on the case, and all screw holes were where they should be and fit well.Component Space -They aren't joking when they call it a full tower case, this baby has room to spare. My build specifications are:Mobo: Asus Z87 PlusCPU: Intel i7-4770k (Currently using stock heat sink, might upgrade to water cooled or another aftermarket sink soon, but regardless of what I do the case has plenty of room for it)Ram: 2x4gb DDR3 Corsair VengeanceGPU: Gigabyte GTX 770 GDDR5-2gbPSU: Corsair Professional HX 750wHDD: 1tb Western Digital Caviar Black, and 128gb Samsung 840 Pro SeriesDVD: Asus 24xDVD-RWThe GTX 770 is a monster of a video card, and it fit inside with 0 problems. If I were to try and fit another big card in there it might get pretty tight, but only right there on the Motherboard. With careful maneuvering you should be able to fit two large cards, and definitely fit any 2 medium sized with no problem, and the rest of the chassis is wide open with plenty of room for cables.Everything considered, I'm extremely happy with this case. I would definitely recommend to anyone planning a new build with good components.Note - The screws and extra brackets are contained in a thin white box that is placed inside one of the hard drive bays, when I opened the case the white blended in so well I had a minor panic attack when I thought it hadn't come with any of the screws. Take deep breaths and look in there, it's easy to miss at first lol