Gadgetory

hey everyone this is Steve from gamers Nexus dotnet and today we're looking at NZXT is phantoms 630 enthusiast McMansion gaming case I've done three case reviews recently so this will be the last in the line before we hit some new liquid coolers and more gaming content the phantom 630 is a sort of successor to the 820 we reviewed recently but it attempts to fill the I don't have $250 burning a hole in my pocket market which and this is news to me quite a few of you peons are a part of first and foremost I will say that the 630 is priced at 180 dollars hence my attribution of the McMansion category but ships with nearly identical cooling features although slightly modified cable management options and fewer shiny lights than the phantom 820 which is the the 250 dollar one as always let's hit the hard specs and an overview of functionality prior to getting into my opinions and the objective thermal data structurally speaking NZXT phantom 630 isn't too different from the 820 it's slightly shorter and about 10 millimetres fatter making for easier cable management but the underlying frame is the same sturdy scaffolding we're familiar with from NZXT and the outer shell isn't all that different either the 630 ships with for fans presently three of which are 200 millimetres in the the front top and side top beam exhaust and one 140 millimeter in the rear also exhaust creating a somewhat standard airflow pathway and there are optional expansion slots for another 200 millimeter fan in the top a 120 or 140 millimeter internal pivotal fan and up to to bottom 140 or 120 millimeter fans we had some fun in numerating a fan configurations with the case so if you're interested in determining what the actual difference an extra fan or two will make stick around for the latter half of the video and I will show you some charts the case will accommodate four external drives of up to eight internal 3.5 or 2.5 drives and two of those eight our SSD only cages that are concealed behind the motherboard it also hosts nine expansion slots the case chips in white matte black and gunmetal and the one you're looking at is gunmetal so the same with our 820 it was gunmetal it's outfitted with a split-level motherboard mounting panel and that is it's kind of interesting it allows cable routing through the horizontal plane rather than the vertical plane and this is particularly useful when dealing with the EPS the 12-volt cable and the fan cables other than that the the case can fit a CPU cooler of up to 170 millimeters in height and the that's with the side fan in place and if you remove the side fan that ships with it it's 200 millimeters in height max for the CPU cooler and video cards of up to 325 millimeters will fit or if you remove the hard drive cages you can fit them up to 500 and 7 millimeters speaking of that the hard drive bays are completely modular meaning you can remove some of them or all of them which opens up space for a custom cooling loop or more breathable front intake the hard drive bays are fitted with the same flimsy cages that are shipped with the 820 but no real love lost there the case in total weighs around 27 pounds so it's only a few pounds lighter than the 820 and is mostly the same size I mean at the end of the day it's 10 millimeters wider I believe and slightly shorter so once again very similar to the 820 there is however no mini hue on this one so the lighting options are completely absent other than a rear i/o panel light which is pretty nice very bright but still nice so I suppose that contributes a lot to the cost cutting because you're losing out on that hue option but if you really care you can buy your own custom lighting system for cheaper anyway than the $70 difference between the two cases overall the case was the strap described to us by NZXT reps as what they called the perfect case for those who couldn't quite stretch for the 820 but really liked it and let's figure out if it is in fact the perfect case for those who can't stretch for the 820 so throughout the build process I was taken aback by how even more so than its predecessor how these 630 is one of the easiest cases to build with on the market there are others that are great in this price range don't get me wrong but the 630 just really steps ahead and offers a couple new features that are very cool like the ones I've mentioned and the cable management options first of all are an apple and positioned perfectly for the ATX boards and most VGA s-video graphics adapters of course and the split-level motherboard it just makes it that much easier to conceal the cables the dark side of the board features easily exploited cable routing contours and cable tie anchor points so while still managing to cram two hidden SSD compartments and all the other rear facing features the the case very easily accommodates all of those cables it's there's just a ton of room even for three or four PCIe cables a fully modular drive bay system also allows for very customizable liquid loops and other airflow pathways depending on how extreme you want to get but the case will still mount you our standard three by 120 millimeter and two by 120 millimeter CLC radiators and whatever normal mostly other radiators you have that are listed in the specs linked below so check the respects if you're going to buy the case that way you know if your radiator will fit the interior is still plenty big despite having ever so slightly shorter stature than the 820 NZXT result several of my complaints from their 820 including the SD card readers inadequate clearance from the hinged front panel previously if you saw the the 820 review previously the front door would not close with an SD card inserted it was just terrible because if you hit that door with your knee or something and you risk potentially damaging the card so it just it was really disconcerting to leave it in there but now it does so cleanly and the card fits so that was fixed they also replaced the plastic key coolest X external clamps excuse me with more rugged metal clamps which seemed infinitely more sturdy and reliable than the previous option further we were told by an NZXT rep at CES that they have changed their painting process for cases and all those specifics weren't given I'm hoping that it resolves the lack of resilience in the 820 s exterior and the paint previously it sort of scratched very easily just from moving it from floor to table which is not normal in our other cases we test overall it looks like the company is extremely receptive to consumer media and media feedback which is more encouraging than anything else really and they've taken advice from previous cases and added it to the 630 so hopefully they'll do so again in the future and with that let's talk about cooling and performance the top of this case features a three step fan controller that effectively offers low medium and high settings for obvious noise and performance advantages were desired before I tested this against other cases I tested it against itself using each of these settings and in addition did a further test - to check aftermarket cooling solutions to see which see if it was actually worth investing in more fans all the testing methodology is defined in the article linked below just to quickly note though the aftermarket editions we made were pretty simple I added an extra 200 millimeter NZXT fan li's same one in the case to the second top exhaust position and an internal 120 millimeter silverstone AP 123 fan to the drives cages angled upward toward both the VGA and CPU cooler so here's the chart the deltas are pretty uniform here but for the aftermarket bar they're sort of unimpressive really this has always been the situation with NZXT cases something about the way the airflow channels work it just really does not improve because at the end of the day it's already I think the channels are sort of already saturated unless you're using a very large GP video card which I will talk about more in a moment adding a bottom fans of the h18 did result result in a noticeable difference in GPU thermal dissipation it was I believe seven Celsius I think and the same I suspect would be true with the 630 though I did not test it due to complications explained in the article if you do add an extra fan if you were to add another fan it should be in the bottom position to cool your video card because you're not going to get any noticeable difference in the CPU we're talking like two to three degrees max I personally do not see the value in spending you know 15 20 bucks on another 200 millimeter fan just for that so no immediate gain let's look at the cross comparison between other cases this is the CPU cooling spread on all of our cases the Nexus 4 the GPU the phantom 630 on high settings hovers at around fifty six point seven Celsius under load after accounting for ambient 21 C ambient where the 820 is 56 C with and easily within our 5% margin of error so no huge difference there this validates my expectations that the two would perform almost identically above the 630 everything above it is pretty much every I mean really just every other case on the bench other than the low-end Cobra we tested but the larger fancier cases will often be embellished with lots of plastic grills dust filters sound dampeners and larger fans so don't be too surprised by that that means that just because you're spending more doesn't mean you get better cooling it means that you get better other features like a quieter case the pea 630 is quiet and cools efficiently whereas something like the armored Evo is fairly noisy but unbeatable in terms of thermal spec here's the GPU chart once again the differences are largely insignificant I will make the standard disclaimer that we moved from our old GTX 580 to smaller cards for the new test bench and in part to simulate mid-range configurations and in part because modern cards are cooler and smaller that said we found that the deltas between GPU thermals on large and small cases are significantly more noticeable with large cards what does this mean well if you're running a GTX 680 for example you're going to see more immediate advantages to using the larger cases than then with a 70 850 so pretty impossible to have a universal test bench but we do our best with all of this known watch the end of the day message the phantom 630 is quite simply a resilient solid and trustworthy case it's a pleasure to build in and as with its predecessors somehow makes cable management Wow I can't say those words today cable management surprisingly fun the case doesn't have any major quality flaws to speak of and the performance is about what you'd expect with that noted the phantom 630 is here now and ready for building so given its reliability acceptable performance and great ease of installation features uncomfort recommending it to enthusiast builders if you are looking for other options in the price range I will once again reference Corsair 650d 600 T cases Silverstone's impending FTO for thermal takes Revo though to be honest I'm not a huge fan of that one and if you'd like something cheaper there's currently a fantastic deal on Rosewell store version 2 on Newegg it's a $30 off promo code on for a couple days I think drops it to $90 very good deal and I'd also just suggest the P to 80 by antec and cooler master storm series of cases specifically the scout and sniper that's it for this video review check out the full review below and leave a comment if you have any questions I'll see you all next time peace