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Hey,
I’ve always loved the Phanteks Evolv cases with the tempered glass panels, truly a beautiful case but I’m sure most would agree that the layout design is atrocious. Its one of the most attractive cases but on the flip side one of the most challenging cases to build in. As standard, you’ve little to no chance of building a somewhat powerful system thats aircooled and not see temps hitting a scorching 85-95c with the side panels on.
My first build in this case had a 9600k cooled with a corsair h60i AIO and an air cooled 2070 super and on good days, the GPU would hit 85c in a few minutes of intensive gaming. A complete disaster of a setup and so loud it made headphones a must.
So, with the release of the revised model, the Evolv Shift 2, I set about figuring a way to build a 2k/4k gaming rig that was both silent and couldn’t fry an egg on the GPU
Fast forward a few months and, although its still a work in progress, I’d say I’ve finally made that dream a reality.
Specs:
So, how was this achieved? One word, ‘DREMEL’ . In order to fit the two 120mm fans, the centre pillar needed dremel’ing out. As well as a significant amount of the back part of the chassis. It also needed heavy modification to the bottom plastic ‘stand’, which was cut out to allow the 140mm corsair rad and noctua 140mm fan to sit at the bottom. I tried hardline tubing in this thing but after tearing my hair out, I abandoned it and opted for soft tubing instead.
Then, its simply a matter of chucking it all in and bobs your uncle
So, the real question. How does this baby perform? Was it all worth it?… … … Hell yes.
A three hour stress test showed temperature saturation of max Coolant 49c / CPU 54c / GPU 58c. This is all with the DDC pump set at a constant 20%, and fan curves optimised so even under the heaviest of workloads, there’s barely a whisper from the fans. I’m genuinely surprised how quiet this thing truly is.
Hope you all enjoy, any questions let me know and I welcome any suggestions of criticism ofc
I’ve always loved the Phanteks Evolv cases with the tempered glass panels, truly a beautiful case but I’m sure most would agree that the layout design is atrocious. Its one of the most attractive cases but on the flip side one of the most challenging cases to build in. As standard, you’ve little to no chance of building a somewhat powerful system thats aircooled and not see temps hitting a scorching 85-95c with the side panels on.
My first build in this case had a 9600k cooled with a corsair h60i AIO and an air cooled 2070 super and on good days, the GPU would hit 85c in a few minutes of intensive gaming. A complete disaster of a setup and so loud it made headphones a must.
So, with the release of the revised model, the Evolv Shift 2, I set about figuring a way to build a 2k/4k gaming rig that was both silent and couldn’t fry an egg on the GPU
Fast forward a few months and, although its still a work in progress, I’d say I’ve finally made that dream a reality.
Specs:
- ASUS Rog Strix B550i motherboard
- Ryzen 5600X (stable undervolt of -30) with EK Velocity waterblock
- ASUS TUF RTX3080 12gb OC (stable undervolt) with EK Quantum Vector waterblock + backplate
- 32Gb Corsair 3600mhz DDR4
- 1tb WD Black SN850
- Corsair SF750 platinum PSU
- 1x 240mm XSPC Ultrathin rad (nestled between the back panel and the chassis)
- 2x Noctua NF-A12s cooling the 240mm rad
- 1x 140mm Corsair rad
- 1x Noctua NF-F14 cooling ghe 140mm rad
- EK XTOP DDC pump
- 13mm EK Duraclear tubing
- EK Solid Azure Blue coolant
So, how was this achieved? One word, ‘DREMEL’ . In order to fit the two 120mm fans, the centre pillar needed dremel’ing out. As well as a significant amount of the back part of the chassis. It also needed heavy modification to the bottom plastic ‘stand’, which was cut out to allow the 140mm corsair rad and noctua 140mm fan to sit at the bottom. I tried hardline tubing in this thing but after tearing my hair out, I abandoned it and opted for soft tubing instead.
Then, its simply a matter of chucking it all in and bobs your uncle
So, the real question. How does this baby perform? Was it all worth it?… … … Hell yes.
A three hour stress test showed temperature saturation of max Coolant 49c / CPU 54c / GPU 58c. This is all with the DDC pump set at a constant 20%, and fan curves optimised so even under the heaviest of workloads, there’s barely a whisper from the fans. I’m genuinely surprised how quiet this thing truly is.
Hope you all enjoy, any questions let me know and I welcome any suggestions of criticism ofc
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