TheRetroArcade
Veteran
Posts: 1,965
Joined: Feb 2026
Joined: Feb 2026
An outstandingly affordable classy chassis, with support for 360 mm AIOs, chunky GPUs, and Micro-ATX motherboards. You could make one of the world’s most powerful systems in here if you wanted. Build quality is solid, and the pricing to die for. Just remember to grab a blow duster.
PC Gamer's got your back
Our experienced team dedicates many hours to every review, to really get to the heart of what matters most to you. Find out more about how we evaluate games and hardware.
I bloody love the Phanteks XT V3. There’s just something about it that resonates with me. Small form factor cases are massively underrated. They really are. The very concept of them channels this essence of what technological advancement should be about. They’re arguably some of the best PC cases out there, on a purely philosophical basis, and I will die, on, that, hill.
Processing should shrink year-on-year (whether or not we’re reaching the limits of Moore’s law besides). You should be able to do more with less. More performance, less energy. More efficiency, less space. The idea that we need these massive goliath full-tower PCs, brimming with slots and cables and fans to deliver the performance we need, is just nonsensical, particularly when you could theoretically get to the moon these days with nothing more than the processing power of a Raspberry Pi.
It’s that ethos that the XT V3 facilitates wholeheartedly, and I 100% get behind.
This is a Micro-ATX case from Phanteks, based off the back of the company’s remarkably affordable budget XT line. It comes in at an incredibly low price point of just £60 in the UK or $66 in the US, cheaper if you go for the white variant. There’s also an M3 version, that’s remarkably similar, albeit includes a mesh front-panel with additional support for two 120 mm front intakes as well. Again, in both black and white.
Form factor: Compact Micro-ATXDimensions: 41.0 x 12.2 x 6.0 cmMotherboard support: ITX, mATX + Back connectorsExpansion slots: 4 horizontalFront IO: 1x USB 3.0, 1x USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Type C, 1x Microphone/Headphone ComboTotal fan support: 7Fan count: 3x 120 mm TOP, 3x 120 mm BOTTOM, 1x 120 mm REARRadiator support: Up to 360 mm TOPGraphics card support: 430 mm length, 175 mm WidthStorage: 2x 2.5-inch; 1x 3.5-inchPSU support: ATX (up to 150 mm)Weight: 6.05 kgPrice: $66/£60
It’s seriously clean, and although the materials on the non-glass elements aren’t the most premium, we can let it slide, particularly given what you’re getting for the price. Phanteks even threw in three 120 mm RGB reverse-blade fans in the floor too.
The V3 is remarkably compact all things said and done, coming in at just 460x235x370 mm, it fits quite snugly on top of any desk space you might have. The real beauty of that is that despite its humble sizing, it actually packs in a serious amount of kit.
Of course, you get the Micro-ATX and ITX mobo support as standard, but you can also fit seven 120 mm fans in here, a 360 mm AIO, full-fat power supplies up to 150 mm, and a chunky four-slot GPU if your heart so desires (in fact, I slammed a Zotac RTX 5080 in here with relative ease).
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Storage support is fairly minimal admittedly. You can house two 2.5-inch drives on a single caddy, and one 3.5-inch HDD on another, all tucked away in the back of the motherboard tray, and that’s it.
Now I would typically throw that out as a non-factor at this point. A year ago, you could just grab those two caddies, chuck them in the trash, and move on, particularly given how affordable some of the best SSDs on the market were in the M.2 sector at the time. But as the AI takeover has well and truly trashed PC building, I’m starting to question whether these two older form factors and the SATA connection standard might actually be making an unfortunate comeback sooner than we think.
As for the build experience, Phanteks has done an impressive job here, t...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?
PC Gamer's got your back
Our experienced team dedicates many hours to every review, to really get to the heart of what matters most to you. Find out more about how we evaluate games and hardware.
I bloody love the Phanteks XT V3. There’s just something about it that resonates with me. Small form factor cases are massively underrated. They really are. The very concept of them channels this essence of what technological advancement should be about. They’re arguably some of the best PC cases out there, on a purely philosophical basis, and I will die, on, that, hill.
Processing should shrink year-on-year (whether or not we’re reaching the limits of Moore’s law besides). You should be able to do more with less. More performance, less energy. More efficiency, less space. The idea that we need these massive goliath full-tower PCs, brimming with slots and cables and fans to deliver the performance we need, is just nonsensical, particularly when you could theoretically get to the moon these days with nothing more than the processing power of a Raspberry Pi.
It’s that ethos that the XT V3 facilitates wholeheartedly, and I 100% get behind.
This is a Micro-ATX case from Phanteks, based off the back of the company’s remarkably affordable budget XT line. It comes in at an incredibly low price point of just £60 in the UK or $66 in the US, cheaper if you go for the white variant. There’s also an M3 version, that’s remarkably similar, albeit includes a mesh front-panel with additional support for two 120 mm front intakes as well. Again, in both black and white.
Form factor: Compact Micro-ATXDimensions: 41.0 x 12.2 x 6.0 cmMotherboard support: ITX, mATX + Back connectorsExpansion slots: 4 horizontalFront IO: 1x USB 3.0, 1x USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Type C, 1x Microphone/Headphone ComboTotal fan support: 7Fan count: 3x 120 mm TOP, 3x 120 mm BOTTOM, 1x 120 mm REARRadiator support: Up to 360 mm TOPGraphics card support: 430 mm length, 175 mm WidthStorage: 2x 2.5-inch; 1x 3.5-inchPSU support: ATX (up to 150 mm)Weight: 6.05 kgPrice: $66/£60
It’s seriously clean, and although the materials on the non-glass elements aren’t the most premium, we can let it slide, particularly given what you’re getting for the price. Phanteks even threw in three 120 mm RGB reverse-blade fans in the floor too.
The V3 is remarkably compact all things said and done, coming in at just 460x235x370 mm, it fits quite snugly on top of any desk space you might have. The real beauty of that is that despite its humble sizing, it actually packs in a serious amount of kit.
Of course, you get the Micro-ATX and ITX mobo support as standard, but you can also fit seven 120 mm fans in here, a 360 mm AIO, full-fat power supplies up to 150 mm, and a chunky four-slot GPU if your heart so desires (in fact, I slammed a Zotac RTX 5080 in here with relative ease).
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Storage support is fairly minimal admittedly. You can house two 2.5-inch drives on a single caddy, and one 3.5-inch HDD on another, all tucked away in the back of the motherboard tray, and that’s it.
Now I would typically throw that out as a non-factor at this point. A year ago, you could just grab those two caddies, chuck them in the trash, and move on, particularly given how affordable some of the best SSDs on the market were in the M.2 sector at the time. But as the AI takeover has well and truly trashed PC building, I’m starting to question whether these two older form factors and the SATA connection standard might actually be making an unfortunate comeback sooner than we think.
As for the build experience, Phanteks has done an impressive job here, t...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?