A Look Inside
Getting the side panel off the case is very easy. It is held into place by three thumbscrews. We we take the side panel off the case and take a look at the included 200mm side panel fan it uses a 3pin connector so you can connect it directly to your motherboard or the included fan controller. All of the other fans in the case are already connected to the fan controller. Taking a look inside the Phantom 820 we can see that NZXT has continued the gunmetal look, which looks awesome.
Starting at the front of the case you have the four 5.25-inch drive bays. These use a simple tool-less design that works pretty well. If you do not wish to use the tool-less system you can remove it completely and secure your drives with screws. You will notice a bunch of holes on the end of the drive cage. These can be used to hold thumbscrews if needed.
Moving down there are two hard drive cages, but they are completely closed off from this side of the case. I actually like this design as it keeps this side of the case pretty clean. The bottom hard drive case is actually removable. Just press in the two tabs and slide it out. Inside you will find two hard drive trays. All of the trays in this case support both 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch hard drives.
At the bottom of the case there is room to install a 120 or 140mm cooling fan. There are 6 standoffs that will keep your power supply off the bottom of the case for better airflow. As far as cables on the case go you have pretty much everything included USB 3.0.
Moving up you can see the 140mm exhaust fan and 200mm top fan. Also in view are the LEDs that are part of the Phantom 820’s lighting system. They are 5 top mounted LEDs that will light up the inside of your case nicely. There are quite a lot of cable routing holes, there are 10 large holes with the included rubber inserts and a very large opening at the top left of the case for your CPU power cable. The CPU cutout is quite large as well.
Before we take the other side panel of the case off there is also a pivot mounting on the top hard drive cage that can support 120 or 140mm fans.
If we take the opposite side panel of the case off you can see how everything is designed. Looking at the top hard drive cage there are four more drive trays, giving you six total. Another nice addition to this case is the CPU power extension cable. This means you can install this on your motherboard before you put it in your case and you don’t have to worry about your CPU power cable reaching the top of your motherboard. There is more than enough room on the backside of the case to route all of your cables.
