Phanteks Evolv Shift 2 Air
Super-compact madness
Short, compact, with plenty of airflow. Much like our editor.
THE ORIGINAL EVOLV SHIFT series of chassis from Phanteks was quite a departure from regular case design. It was perhaps one of the most interesting products of 2017, and came in two variants, both of which tried to capitalize on a super-small footprint combined with a versatile design. It’s no secret that we here at Maximum PC were fans of the two cases, featuring both of them multiple times across a variety of different builds, the last one being our liquid-cooled, pink, console-killing beastie. But that’s not to say they were perfect in every way.
The biggest problem these systems had came down to a lack of available intake air and exhaust space. In fact, our console-killer’s original configuration, prior to the installation of Mayhems’ XTR coolant, often hit 85 C on the GPU alone. Removing the two dust filters from the side vents of the rear panel dropped that figure by a solid 10 C, and removing an entire rear glass panel of the chassis reduced that figure even further, down to 59 C, which is an utterly staggering temperature drop.