Review on Phanteks PH EC300PTG_BW Eclipse Tempered Glass by Tony Ledbetter

Pro: The case is incredibly compact and minimalistic. Attachment of the SSD (2) from the back to the mainboard tray - The front panel can be easily removed - There are 2 USB3.0 ports on the top (no 2.0 ports, but seriously, what's the point?) - Overall looks the ergonomics from Good - Decent price Bad :- No hard drive bay cooling and bad air circulation; Consequently, I cannot recommend this case to anyone who wants to install a conventional hard drive, as the hard drive(s) will certainly overheat. The small size comes at the expense of a lack of an optical drive, so be prepared to load software via USB or an external optical drive (my pick) - No PCI slot cover, leaving a rectangular hole over the slots (looks like a conscious design decision ) - Very little space behind the PSU for cables. Some notes: A hard drive by drilling holes above the hard drive bay and installing a 120mm fan that blows air out of the hard drive bay. There are no front vents and the grille in front of the hard drive bay is covered with a plastic panel. You CAN remove the panel by removing the four screws that attach the panel to the front grille and then cutting out the plastic that is blocking airflow through the grille into the hard drive bay. If you really need a hard drive: Given the small distance between the hard drive cage and the power supply, you'll probably need to flip the drives over to allow the power/SATA cables to come out in front of and above the hard drive cage. If you decide to buy this case, keep in mind that it's cramped and really only meant for SSD drives. At the very least, I would modify or remove the hard drive bay to leave enough room for cables. There is probably not enough space between the hard drive bay and the modular power supply (I have 750W). The case works well for non-modular power supplies where the wire harnesses run through a single connector - you can orient the cable connector to bypass the hard drive bay as it doesn't take up the full width of the case. For modular consumables, the available space is (optimistically) no more than 1 inch - for my Thermaltake consumable it was just too narrow to be practical. The problems associated with modifying this case, plus the cost of (at least) 2 additional fans (1 for the HDD bay modification and 1 in front of the graphics card) make this (pun intended) a false economy. I strongly recommend spending more money on a larger, more thoughtful case design.