Three years ago, when Phanteks first launched the Evolv Shift, it did not only look as cool as it does to this day, but also offered customers an exciting form factor that was not as widely spread as it is now. By today's standards, the Evolv Shift 2 still manages to check off all the right boxes. There is the build quality with its solid steel frame and thick aluminium covers, for example. On top of that, Phanteks tweaked the internal layout considerably, which on one hand simplifies the tooling and on the other offers a few benefits around IO placement, PSU installation, and optional fan mountings.

You still get the RGB power LED, single fan, and all the usual compatibility for long GPUs as well, and a respectable CPU air cooler clearance of up to 85 mm for a chassis of this format. That said, the age of the Phanteks Evolv Shift 2 starts to show a bit when considering liquid-cooling support and its lack of focus on thermal performance with the glass variant. With our torture test, the GPU cracked triple digits and thermal throttled, reducing its core clock speed while all the fans inside the case were hard at work at maximum RPM, which made for a loud and hot system. However, that changed immediately as soon as we ran the same tests with the cloth side panels. GPU and CPU temperatures on load were as expected, with 20%–25% cooler temperatures and, as a result, much lower noise output.

That simply means that the Phanteks Evolv Shift 2 Air chassis with its cloth sides for $100 is a very good choice for air cooling, as you can find several really good low-profile CPU air coolers that will easily fit, while SFX-L PSUs are both potent and affordable enough not to pay a premium for their small size compared to SFX units. On the other side of the spectrum is the classic Phanteks Evolv Shift 2, which falls short in terms of what users are looking for in modern ITX cases today. Thus, we can recommend the Phanteks Evolv Shift 2 Air, but not the classic, glass-paneled variant.