Phanteks Eclipse P400 Tempered Glass Edition Case Review

In an attempt to provide a bit of scale I installed the Gigabyte AX370 to check motherboard alignment and see what kind of cooling clearances there are to work with.  The Gigabyte AX370 is an standard ATX motherboard which sits quite well inside the P400.

For overall fitment the motherboard looks quite nice and you are left with plenty of room to work with and will support tower style coolers up to 160mm tall.   Generally speaking if you look at the exhaust fan you can get a good idea as to what kind of cooler support any chassis can provide. 

At the bottom of the case the divider plate leave you with little clearance for anything including access to onboard USB headers and larger expansion cards you might install.  Sadly, this excludes dual slotted graphics cards but should be perfect for PCI Express SSDs and any card only occupying a single slot.

I have always been impressed with the construction of Phanteks cases.  They are well assembled and offer a good amount of modding potential.   The Phanteks Eclipse P400 Tempered Glass Edition comes with a few factory mods including a custom red and black color scheme.  While this doesn’t prohibit any paint mods it does discourage them since few colors go well with Red than Badass Black.

Cooling mods are also not required given how many fan locations come standard on the P400.  My only complaint is the rather small intake vents on the front panel.  I applaud that vents were provided at all however, the rather small filters are self imposed choke points for free flowing air given how fast they can clog with dirt.

Despite this the P400 has a lot of potential to highlight a custom DIY hardline watercooling loop.  You get a factory mounting bracket for a D5 pump or pump+res combo and the extra room to the right of the motherboard means you won’t have to do any cutting or drilling.  Radiator support is quite good with a single triple fan 360 radiator support at the front along with any dual fan radiator up to 280 at either the top or front of the case. 

It is not every day that you find a case that “shouldn’t” be modified.  That isn’t to say you cannot modify the Phanteks Eclipse P400 but for the most part any change you make to the case might actually ruin the overall style.   This chassis really does support everything any novice builder would need and still give them room to grow as their system expands.

There are a few things I wish could have been better such as the location of the expansion slots.  In most tasteful cases you will find these completely inside the chassis as that provides a good amount of security and also cleans up the rear profile of the case.  On the P400 the rear panel is basically flat requiring that the screws holding your expansion cards in place to be outside the case.  Personally I have never liked this design but is a common feature on lesser expensive cases.

The other item is the top panel detail.  Both the top and front panel are constructed from folded steel which is a nice detail on a case in this price range however, as you saw early in this review, to complete the overall look Phanteks added a magnetic mesh filter to cover up the stamped holes.  Much like the expansion slot detail this is a common cover up and in a way I would have rather seen a plastic panel with solid metal mesh over a decorative toupee.

Overall the Phanteks Eclipse P400 Tempered Glass edition chassis is a very nice case that delivers an incredible value that is normally seen in more expensive chassis offerings.  The front and top panels are constructed from folded steel, you get a tempered glass side panel, custom paint and RGB controller.  Combine that with an open chassis design for DIY watercooling and you have a case that is a good starting point for any custom builder with room to grow.

Solid Construction
Tempered Glass Side Panel
Folded Steel Panels
Open Interior Design
USB 3.0 Support
Unique Modern Style
10 Color LED Controller
Custom Paint

Small filters on front panel
Watecooling wipes out most extra internal storage
Popped out expansion slot mounts