Phanteks Evolv Shift 2 Air

Super-compact madness

- ZAK STOREY

THE ORIGINAL EVOLV SHIFT series of chassis from Phanteks was quite a departure from regular case design. It was perhaps one of the most interesting products of 2017, and came in two variants, both of which tried to capitalize on a super-small footprint combined with a versatile design. It’s no secret that we here at Maximum PC were fans of the two cases, featuring both of them multiple times across a variety of different builds, the last one being our liquid-cooled, pink, console-killing beastie. But that’s not to say they were perfect in every way.

The biggest problem these systems had came down to a lack of available intake air and exhaust space. In fact, our console-killer’s original configuration, prior to the installation of Mayhems’ XTR coolant, often hit 85 C on the GPU alone. Removing the two dust filters from the side vents of the rear panel dropped that figure by a solid 10 C, and removing an entire rear glass panel of the chassis reduced that figure even further, down to 59 C, which is an utterly staggering temperature drop.

In fact, it was such a common problem that companies such as Modmymods.com still offer custom-cut Evolv Shift front panels for exactly this reason, with any number of cutouts and designs developed to help alleviate the problem—albeit at a fairly substantial cost.