Phanteks Shift Air 2 Review – A Monolith For Your Desk

Phanteks has a unique take on making PC enclosures, as many of their designs go beyond a typical boxy case by having a certain visual flair, quality materials and finishes.

Creating a statement case around the ITX board form factor can take many directions, Phanteks literally chooses “up” with their Evolv Shift series. Oh, and I can say at least one thing up front here: there are going to be a lot of portrait orientation photographs below.

Materials and Finish

Handling this particular version shows off quality materials and excellent fitment, even though everything comes apart. The sides and frame create a sturdy but small chassis. The front and rear are solid with running vents along the edges. Those are anodized aluminum panels while the side frames are reinforced plastic and not very flexible. I have seen similar backing to this on a couple of recent cases now, and I do like the subtle patterning under the fabric material.

Helpful Build Guide

The included manual is a well done glossy piece with color photos and easy to understand diagrams. It contains useful building tips, general direction on what components to tackle first, wire routing suggestions and call-outs for design features and options. Total approval from me here, and I think many other builders would appreciate it as well. IMO, new builders – or builders without SFF ITX experience – could find working through this assembly a bit challenging.

Breaking it Down

All four sides are removable and held on with captive thumbscrews (yeah!) and only from the top. For mechanical panel retention design with the Shift 2 Air, you align the plastic pins, push and slide it down to lock, and then use the big easy-to-grab thumbscrews at the top to fully retain it. I like this assembly mechanic. I know it works well because it does not make me cringe when thinking about removing a panel to show off the internals to someone. Like, can you believe this all fits in here, and its all facing upwards?

After building in the case, I am personally very happy to have the breathable “Air” fabric side panels as I like the idea of hot components and fans having an easy access to fresh air and radiative exhaust.

Other Internal Features

The Evolv Shift 2 Air will take a GPU up to 2.9 “slots” wide and 335mm in length, very reasonable for an ITX build. I’ll install a big GPU later to test out how difficult that actually is. To attach that GPU, Phanteks includes a PCIe 3.0×16 riser cable. The instructions have you take that cable through what I might consider a tortuous path, but it works. A testament to its quality and flexibility, really. No… actually it was somewhat difficult to make one of the tight radius bends, come to think of it.

With all the panels removed the entire case has easy accessibility via the sides – when the case is empty. Cable routing options are many and varied, and you’ll have to be creative about routing under, internally, externally (outside the chassis frame, but beneath the solid front / rear panels) or a combination of all of them.

There is cabling for addressing RGB components via the included controller, which is powered by a SATA connection. Lights can be controlled with a pair of top buttons for mode and color, or connected back to the motherboard D-RGB 3 pin sync connector. Usually you get one or the other (case controlled or MB), but this is nice to see as an option. The included cabling will also allow you to daisy-chain additional D-RGB components off the end as another thoughtful option.

See that silver retaining screw in one of the photos below? That’s some fun for later, but probably only if you do something out of order.

There is room to mount a single 3.5” drive (no I didn’t try it), or two 2.5” drives within the included dual SSD bracket. There is room for two such dual drive brackets, for a total of 4 possible locations to mount 2.5” drives. Beware the tight clearances and cabling though; that will come up later.

Building experience

After building in this case, my advice would be to plan which components you expect to use carefully, and install them in the order recommended by the included guide. Expect that you will have to remove and refit the same component a few times to get everything routed properly. (I’m not too proud.)

Basically the Shift Air 2 is like many ITX cases in that you should plan your build with a higher attention to detail for cable routing and component selection. When they are finally placed in the chassis, a few mm can matter quite a bit. Leaving certain pieces slightly loose allowed for sneaking cabling under them, not because of the wiring clearance needed, but because of the end connector on the front of that wire.

So, we just received this be quiet! SFX-L 600w PSU and I thought it would be perfect to use here, as Phanteks does make allowance for the use of the SFX-L. Dramatic musical sting time – because, no. As you can see by the photos below, my preferred orientation with the PSU drawing in fresh air though the side fabric would not work because of the case PSU passthrough cable ‘L’ bend. That attachment would have routed the wire straight through the wall of the case into the outside. Two things: 1. Phanteks does mention making sure the PSU fan is pointed inwards when using the non “Air” Shift 2 with the TG panels (so I know they believe it works) and 2. the bend in the wiring shows that Phanteks did not expect the location or orientation of the be quiet! 600w SFX-L power inlet. So now you know too.

I ended up having to also move the SSD mounting bracket away from the stock location, as it was easier to cable by moving it upwards, and it avoided the revised power supply plug cable path.

For SSD mounting, there is essentially almost every option available for cabling them, they’re all viable. Upside down, backwards, etc. Think through your options based on what wires you have, how you’re routing them through the interior and/or exterior, because there are are many passthroughs and routing options in the Shift 2.

Specific to the Shift 2

Another issue that is specific to the Shift 2 was the potential routing of the AIO liquid lines as being a bit cramped. This will vary by AIO manufacturer I expect. Phanteks does make an allowance to pass them between the upper and lower sections via an angled notch in the mid plate, but with an SFX-L PSU, that’s a very crowded space. There is enough room to give one tube some relief along the outside edge of the PSU, which allows the side panel to still close up. Again, this will be dependent on the line size, flexibility and length from the manufacturer of your AIO.

Hey, building in a small form factor case around an ITX board is both challenging and fun! I found the rest of the assembly to be typical for the SFF or ITX experience – not quite enough room, and trying to be clever with cable routing.

Oh, and that silver “thumb” screw I mentioned earlier? That is designed to hold the lower section of the graphics card frame into the case, and it is somewhat difficult to get at because it’s just beneath the ITX board right where all the cables connect. Get a magnetic screwdriver and a friend to hold the GPU into the system while you try and catch the threads from the MB side.

Hey Man, Nice Case

Since building this system, it has gathered quite a number of compliments on it’s appearance, and I have to agree. It’s sharp, distinctive and on top of that, a good performer!

Testing the build

For my components I wanted a challenge to cool, but still having good performance with no pulled clocks. I also wanted something that a high end enthusiast might have so I picked up the Gigabyte Z390 I Aorus Pro WiFi, and equipped it with a delidded Intel 8600K OC’d to 4.9 on all cores at 1.235v vcore and top level LLC for the board with a few other minor tweaks. Just XMP on the 3200 ram. The GPU is the ASUS Strix 2080ti factory OC, with a modest +50Mhz core, +500Mhz memory and 120% raised power limit. All of it run on the 80+ Gold rated 600w be quiet! SFX-L – quite the trooper as the GPU alone was pulling around 300 indicated watts at 99% usage.

Keeps Its Cool

This is the closest I have seen to almost having no case at all, as removing the panels did not make a sizable difference in noise or cooling. In fact, with the panels all off, the temps did go down a few C, but in some cases so did the noise because a fan RPM “step” at temperature threshold was crossed!

Conclusion

In my view, this is a statement case, like a nice piece of jewelry, but rather functional at the same time. Fit and finish are very good and pushing a hot system shows that temps can be well under control. If I was in the market for a new ITX case, I could easily choose this one. Personally I would build custom wiring to flush it out and hide the runs. I might add additional lighting – because the fabric mesh shows it off so nicely. I would also fix the right angle PSU connection to work with the be quiet! PSU properly. I have no trouble being an electrical modder, but YMMV. If you were to choose this case, then you have to make friends with the top mounted I/O but that’s pretty much it for any usage short-comings. At about $100, it’s a good value and worthy of an EC from me.