Unlike regular mid-towers, ITX cases generally take the board’s compact dimensions and use that to the designer’s benefit to craft some really funky cases. But sometimes you just want a classic layout but in a smaller form factor. For that audience, Phanteks just announced the P200A, which is really just a fairly standard-layout chassis for ITX systems.

Indeed, the P200A isn’t the most exciting ITX case, but where it underwhelms in its layout, it excels in functional simplicity, RGB, and most importantly: cost. This chassis carries an MSRP of just $50 for the standard variant or $70 if you want the RGB bells and whistles. We have the latter on the test bench today, together with the optional riser cable, so let’s find out if it’s good enough for our Best PC Cases list.

Specifications

Features

Touring around the chassis, we spot that it’s made from painted steel, has a plastic front with mesh that’s made from perforated, painted steel, and a glass side panel with a light tint -- but that’s not all. Unlike almost every other case that came out in the last decade, the PSU sits at the top here, which is a little strange but not a deal-breaker.

You’ll also spot an intake on the side of the chassis to aid with airflow, though no fans are mounted here from the factory.

Front IO, mounted at the bottom, consists of two USB 3.0 ports, a USB Type-C port, mic/headphone combo jack and two buttons to control the RGB mode and color – indeed, this RGB variant comes with an RGB controller built in, and it’s quite a good controller with smooth effects and plenty of mode and color options.

The power button resides at the top of the chassis, and what’s nice about Phanteks’ approach is that it actually has two RGB LEDs for illumination. This means that the button is part of the RGB goodness, which is a nice touch on a budget case like this. There is no HDD activity LED, nor is there a reset switch, which makes connecting the IO pins on the inside a breeze.

Inside the case you’ll find room for up to ATX power supplies, an ITX motherboard, large graphics cards, a 240mm radiator, and four 2.5-inch SSD mounts – two behind the motherboard and two on the side intake covers. There are no mounts for 3.5-inch drives, but you can buy optional brackets to install them – though in all fairness, most people probably aren’t going to use desktop drives in their next build anyway.

The chassis comes with two 120mm RGB fans pre-installed at the front intake location.

So without further ado, lets install a system inside the P200A.

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