A Closer Look - Inside

To access the interior, simply swing open the glass panel held in place by magnets and equipped with rubber lining to close any gaps between the glass and steel frame. The opposite panel may be taken off after loosening the attached thumb screws. Inside the case are a few things that are visually unique at first sight, with no visible drive bays and all the space available for your components. The white steel shroud has a line running across the window-facing edge. As we will see later on, this is actually an ARGB strip. Two openings on the shroud allow for cable management along the bottom edge of the motherboard, and a large one in the front allows for a radiator. It would have been nice to have a cover for the latter as you may not want to go for such a setup—just to make things as clean as possible. Lastly, there are two sets of mounting holes for the plastic PCIe riser slot base should you want to install your GPU vertically.


A black cover on the shroud may be slid back to reveal another cable-routing hole, which is quite unique as most brands just go for a rubber grommet or, worse, leave it open.


A lot is happening on the backside as well. For one, three 2.5" drive bays for easy SSD assembly have been put underneath the large opening of the motherboard tray. Phanteks also added many Velcro strips to the front and underneath the drive trays for easy cable management, and all the case wiring comes pre-routed out of sight. Considering the slew of wires, that is a nice touch and should save you quite a bit of time. The openings for cable-routing along the edge of the motherboard have a bit of an angled edge, which may be a simple change but makes a big difference when routing wiring.


Underneath the shroud are three positions for two included 3.5" trays. As the middle slot overlaps partially with the other two, you may at most use two of these at the same time. The position in the middle is important if you go for a thick radiator and long PSU and still want some storage here. As the trays are stackable, you could buy additional ones and place up to four drives here in total. You can clearly see the three 140 mm SK ARGB fans above the shroud.


Another very prominent part within the Phanteks Eclipse P500A are these four black covers. For one, they hide all the mounting possibilities for up to six additional drives by simply buying more of the black metal trays, which also keeps noise inside the case to a minimum. They also sit on elongated mounting holes you may slide back to reveal cable-routing holes, which should help with a tidy interior.


The PSU bay on the bottom can hold a unit of up to 195 or 250 mm (4 vs. 2 HDD bottom brackets), thus giving you plenty of space, which is important, especially if you are going to run a dual-system configuration. Above that, you will find the ten expansion slots, each protected by a reusable cover held in place with a thumb screw. As mentioned, you may install a 120 or 140 mm fan in the very top to exhaust air out the back.


In the ceiling, you can clearly see the mounting options for 120 or 140 mm fans. As such, you may also install a radiator of up to 360 or 280 mm here. Naturally, if you do opt for an ITX system here, you will be limited to a single 120/140 mm spot for your air or liquid cooling.


All the leads within the Phanteks Eclipse P500A are sleeved black. You will find a single power switch cable, as there is no rest switch or HDD activity LED. You may miss the HDD activity LED if you have nothing but SSDs installed and want to know if your system froze or something is just taking a long time to load. Phanteks also allows you to expand your lighting elements with both their own D-RGB connector and classic 3-pin ARGB devices. Lastly, there is a motherboard header should you want to control your lighting through the motherboard software.