Phanteks P200A - New BUDGET ITX Case!

[Music] hey what's up everyone danny here this is the phanteks eclipse p200a and it's the first of the eclipse line of cases that come in the itx form factor this case comes in two different flavors there's the drgb version and then the performance version the one thing right next to me is the drgb one which comes with a tempered glass side panel as well as two adjustable rgb fans up at the front here the performance version on the other hand has a very similar chassis and layout except the tempered glass panel is switched with a steel panel with the mesh at the bottom half here next to the graphics card and the two fans in the front are just plain black bands they're not rgb um this drgb version has a targeted msrp of 70. and the performance version is a little bit cheaper coming in at 50 msrp but both of them are very affordable i got a chance to build in this and check it out so in this video i'm going to share with you my thoughts the p200a is advertised as a mini itx tower but note that i didn't say sff or small form factor so while this case does support itx motherboards it's not as tiny as some people may think when they first hear itx this case comes in at 30 liters which is pretty big and for reference a lot of the really popular small form factor cases out there are usually less than 20 liters a great example is the cooler master nr200p which comes in at 18 liters so this case is really in between kind of like the small form factors and micro atx like it fits right there in the middle um but there is a bright side to this case being a little bit larger and that is you know with the added space you can fit a standard atx power supply in it which is much cheaper than a sfx power supply especially if you start getting up into like the higher wattage range this case does mount the power supply up at the top with the only orientation for the fan facing downwards into the main chamber because there's no ventilation at the top here so what that means is depending on how your cooling setup is you are going to be potentially pulling warm system air into the power supply there's no power supply cover or like blacking out or the tempered glass or anything to hide the power supply cables so you do see them exiting very clearly it definitely looks like they had space to kind of fit a shroud in there or at least like a partial shroud i'm just curious why they didn't one of the other benefits to the larger size is of course the flexibility for larger coolers and graphics cards you've got a ton of options for cooling with support for up to seven fans you can fit one in the back here uh two on this back side panel and two in the front and then two at the bottom and for radiators you can fit either 240 or 280 in the front uh and then the 240 on the side or 120 at the back large cpu coolers are also supported up to a max height of 165 millimeters i was able to fit the biggest air cooler i had on hand which is the scythe ninja 5 with a centimeter between the highest point to the glass clearance i did however have to switch out the rear fan with a thinner fan because the standard fan was too thick and it was hitting the back of the case i don't think this is going to be too big of a problem with a lot of coolers it's just that this ninja cooler specifically is very large uh four and aft wise so that's why i interfered for graphics cards this space can fit a full three slot graphics card up to 355 millimeters long so it could fit basically any card you can throw at it i installed the accelerate uh rtx 3070 into it which is a pretty beefy 2.7 slot thick card and there's no issues getting it into there the front of the case comes off very easily you just kind of give it pull at the bottom here and it comes right off and then you have access to your front fans if you need to change those out as well as access to the bottom mesh filter which only comes forward out you can't pull it out from the back so you do have to take the front off every time you do want to clean the bottom filter from the outside we've got a power button up top here which has accented rgb lighting for the drgb version of the case this version of the case has a built-in rgb controller with the two buttons in the front controlling the mode and the colors so you don't need any additional software you can just control everything just through those buttons but if you want to you can connect the fans to your motherboard with a standard three pin five volt argb connector on the front there's also a single mic in headphone jack one usb c gen two port and two usb 3.0 ports this case does support mounting the graphics card vertically however you're going to need a riser cable which isn't included and that's going to run you about 30 dollars for the one specific from phanteks that's meant to be used with this case that's almost half the cost of this case and that's more than half the cost of the p200a performance version for a riser cable but if you're about that vertically mounted gpu life then you already know you chose that live it didn't choose you so open up that wallet the side panels are one of my favorite parts about this case because it uses a rounded push pin design which make it a breeze to take off and put it back on there's no more fiddling with thumb screws that are either hard to grip or possibly over tightened uh there's no more misplacing of thumb screws because you're unorganized and you think you can remember where you put them but then you can't you don't have to worry about any of that anymore because now it's all attached to this panel uh and it holds in very rigidly too to the case it's not loose or anything there's no player wiggle room and the panels do have these metal pieces attached to the bottom of them which catch onto the lip of the case so you just slide it on here and then with a little force push it and then you're good to go i think this is a nice feature that i wish all cases had especially at this low of a cost it's less individual parts overall and just way easier for the end user the side panel adjacent to the motherboard has the exact same design except there is a single screw in the back here where you can fasten it in case your cable management bulges out of the case but i didn't find it necessary when i was building it it held very securely and there was no wiggle or anything like that without the screw and speaking of cable management the backside has plenty of room to do just that i had zero issues getting all the cables nice and tidy and they include some rigid metal brackets alongside velcro straps for all your cable managing needs for storage options the p2008 can hold four two napping stripes out of the box two go on the back behind the motherboard tray onto a bracket that's removable and then two of them go on the plastic covers on the front side of the motherboard tray there's no support for three and a half inch drives in the stock configuration which i find a bit disappointing because i don't think we're at the point yet where solid-state storage has completely replaced spinning drives it's still pretty expensive to get into like the three four five terabyte range of solid-state storage so i do still think it's commonplace for people to have a larger spinning drive that they can dump extra files to but with that said the p200a does allow you to take off the two and a half inch plastic drive covers and you can install stackable three and a half inch drive cages which fantex does sell for a pretty reasonable price i did find an alternative solution of this but it's somewhat sketchy and it only works for a single drive you can install a drive vertically using a couple of the existing holes on the motherboard tray but the catch is that you can only use two screws to mount it this is not an official recommendation by me by the way do not do this and then blame me if something goes wrong i'm just saying if you really need to get a three and a half inch drive in there especially if this is going to be a pc that remains stationary for the most part and you're not constantly lugging it around everywhere uh then you can mount it vertically like that and you will most likely be fine but it would have just been nice if they had designed it with four holes so that you can properly mount it to begin with all right now let's talk about the thermals i don't have an extensive collection of data from cases that have all been tested under like the exact same conditions with the exact same hardware and the same settings and overclocks normalized to like the same noise levels uh you're going to have to unfortunately get that somewhere else but i can give you a reference for the specific hardware and programs that i used i tested with both an air cooler and aio i used the site ninja 5 for the air cooler and the nzxt kraken z53 for the aio testing consisted of running the firmar stress test simultaneously with prime95 smallest ffts on all threads and this is a very extreme scenario and most people likely won't run into anything this taxing in their day-to-day use with the ninja 5 air cooler i had the front fan set as intake and we were getting 91 degrees on the cpu and 67 degrees on the gpu i then added two additional fans to pull in air from the side panel back here and that made for a total four fans and the cpu did improve by a few degrees but doing that didn't make too much of a difference for the graphics card and that's probably because it's kind of isolated into some bubble pulling in fresh air just to the bottom so whatever's going on in the rest of the case isn't affecting it too much now that cpu temperature may alarm you but this is more of a fault on the ninja 5 cooler than the case because it's a cooler with fans designed to be very silent and they just simply don't spin that fast so as a result it kind of struggles to keep higher end chips like the 3900x that i was testing uh overclocked to four gigahertz and all cores it struggles to keep that cool but again prime95 is like the toughest test you can throw at a cpu so for reference i did run another test with fermark and cinebench simultaneously which you know also pushes all the threads to 100 and i was seeing 77 degrees on the cpu and 67 degrees on the gpu and this would be a more realistic situation that a typical user would encounter now those primary five temperatures are still too warm for you then you're gonna wanna consider using an aio which does pretty well in this case because the gpu kind of has its own ventilation at the bottom going on and then the air passing through the radiators it kind of has its own thing going on as well uh with the flow path that's dictated by the fans at the front and at the side it all comes and goes kind of and stays in this front pocket of the case here you're limiting the amount of warm air or warm post radiator air getting into the rest of the case when you use an aio if you have fans set up at the front and at the side back here i tested with the radiator at the front and i moved the two included case bands to the side panel when the aio was pulling air through the front as intake and exhausting to the side i saw 75 degrees on the cpu and 69 degrees on the gpu then when the fans were flipped and the air flow direction was reversed there was an increase of two degrees on the cpu but the gpu lowered by six degrees in either situation the temperatures were very good considering the severity of the fermark and prime95 test it's just a matter of which part you would ideally like to keep cooler so for closing thoughts i think this is a great looking case with good airflow you know good build quality comes in at a very reasonable price and it's ideal for the crowd of users that like the smaller cases but not so small that it limits a lot of their options as to what they can fit inside and i'd say this is an easy recommendation as long as you're aware of what the case features and what it does not uh like for example that lack of three and a half inch storage support you know just be aware of things like that to be honest though the existence of this case does really make me wish that there was a micro atx version because the benefit from that is that you can save even more money by not having to buy an itx motherboard which always kind of carries a premium i bet it can be done without adding too much volume to the case there are plenty of micro atx cases out there that are only like 35 liters so this isn't too far off from that it just needs to become a little bit bigger um and given how low the prices case already is i think a micro atx version would kill it because you know people going for budget cases would want budget internals as well uh and itx is simply not budget unfortunately but all that aside i'm really curious to hear what you think about this case though do you think it's too big to be an itx case or do you like the extra space for the added flexibility of what you can you know fit inside um i'd love to hear your thoughts so let me know down in the comments below uh but yeah that pretty much wraps up for this video i want to thank you all as always for watching and for supporting the channel and i'll see you all down in the comments as well as in the next video [Music] bye you

Channel: Nerd on a Budget

Views: 12,282

Keywords: nerd, on, budget, noab, geeky, gamer, gaming, games, video, nerdy, computer, pc, build, console, technology, windows, killer, nvidia, amd, radeon, intel, extreme, value, super, cheap, parts, reddit, hardwareswap, deal, hunter's, showcase, hardware, deals, best, phanteks eclipse p200a airflow case mesh mini itx form factor sff small

Id: c8rOlxXiffg

Length: 12min 31sec (751 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 22 2021