Phanteks Eclipse P400S Chassis Review

BUILD

Our Eclipse P400S build is made up of the following:

Overall the build was good, we thoroughly enjoyed the fact that the PSU is separated and hidden from the rest of the components and keeps the cords with a nice clean look to them. We also chose to install our Cooler Master V850 PSU inverted. Phanteks in our opinion has made a hiccup in the build of the chassis by limiting where you can place your AIO coolers. The top is out of the question as only fans can fit without interfering with your motherboard and RAM. Had they added a small amount of space at the top you could have the AIO at the top. The add-on expansions are not a possibility if you are using a liquid cooling system at the front as they will not be able to click in. The only way to make this work is to use fans only and no AIO and install them on the external of the chassis between the chassis and the front panel.

As you can see we tried two variations, the first is with the fans attached to the external of the chassis and the second on the interior, neither will allow us access to the expansion slots. The connectors at the base of the mother board were fairly tight to hook up the audio and I/O pins without bending them in awkward positions but we worked around that and that’s a simply minor flaw. We completely removed the bottom 3.5″ drive slots to allow for easier airflow in the bottom and we weren’t using them. We hooked in our Plextor M6S 256 SSD mounted in the click in drive slot and it really didn’t even need to be screwed into place but we did just because. This is an awesome new addition and makes switching drives much easier. We also routed the CPU cable to the motherboard around the back of the click in drive to assist with the cable mess. This will only work if your cable is flat and not rounded. Overall  the build went great and we like the way the chassis turned out. That’s our scenario though, anyone looking to use those four extra expansion slots and use an AIO liquid cooler over 120 is not going to have the same opinion. One of the most talked about parts of the Eclipse P400S is the “S”, the silence of this case is outstanding. Barely hearing a thing with the mix of sound dampening and good components. The button on the top panel for the three-speed fan controller is great concept. However, without a way to know or track what level of the three you are on it’s sorta of useless. There’s no change in illumination or sound or anything to tell you if you are on the lowest or highest setting on the fly. For V2 of this case we hope they adjust this. The RGB LED’s are awesome as well and give the case a nice glow. Once again there is a “however” though. That is if you want to use LED’s to their limit you need an upgraded motherboard or software that will allow you to plug in and manually adjust. If you don’t have these options you only get the single solid colour option. Not to say that is bad, but there is more to the LED’s when you have the options.