Review System

Assembly

Installing the motherboard is easy enough, and all the connectors are accessible for the most part, also because of the compact cooler. Those using a larger unit may find that the CPU power connectors are a little hard to reach. Connecting the riser cable is easily done as well because of the solid plastic cover protecting the soldered connection between the ribbons and the PCB itself.


Adding a GPU can be done outside of the chassis by simply removing the mounting frame. I was actually able to skip this step, and just directly screwed in the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti.


Placing an SSD can be done outside of the chassis as well. Simply screw the unit to the metal tray with the drive of your choice and slide the whole contraption into place.


Utilizing a 3.5" drive is rather straightforward as well. Just detach the four rubber-ringed screws from the front of the chassis and screw them into the drive. With that done, push it down into its mounting position with the connectors facing downward.


Things have gotten a bit simpler with the PSU as well, as you may now simply screw it into the frame—the original Evolv Shift forced you to take off the bottom of the chassis to get to the PSU bay.


With everything installed, everything still looks surprisingly clean, with the bottom half mostly empty as we did not go for any liquid-cooling elements. The GPU is clearly accessible, so you can upgrade things quite easily, and the motherboard and its cooler are completely unobstructed as well. Phanteks has done an excellent job in terms of the internal layout.


Taking a quick peek at the front and rear, everything there is fine as well, with the only issue the CPU power cable running across the exhaust fan, unfortunately.


In the ceiling, you have access to all the connectors that are usually facing the rear of the chassis. The recessed GPU area means that any bulky display cables won't be an issue either.

Finished Looks

With everything in place and the system turned on, the Evolv Shift 2 has no fancy or flashy lights that would distract you. Besides the barely audible swoosh of the fans and the visual hints within the chassis, there is very little to draw your attention at idle. As we will see on the next page, the glass setup does not allow for good ventilation. On top of that, the fan doesn't push a lot of air for the sake of being quiet, which further adds to it. Thus, this option is certainly more for looks over function.


With the glass panels, you can clearly see all the installed parts. In case you are wondering about the way the PSU is installed, with the fan facing inward, there is simply no room for an outward-facing fan to draw in fresh air since it would be right up against the glass.


Both the rear fan and top power LED light up in sync, and you may cycle through several modes and lots of solid color choices with the press of a button.


As Phanteks was kind enough to provide us with the cloth side panels as well, we went ahead and replaced the glass covers with those. This makes the case a little wider but still looks great. Both noise and thermals vastly improved when using these.


The CPU cooler may now draw in fresh air from outside, with the GPU also doing the same. At this point, you may also rotate the PSU for its fan to do the same, which we did for the benchmarks with the cloth covers.