Phanteks Reservoir Alum/Copper base RGB LED Cooling (PH-R160_BK01)

Overall I’m happy with this res. I usually avoid acrylic since I’m paranoid about it cracking, but it’s usually the only option for reservoirs like this. I’ll update the review in a few months on its durability.Neat little thing. Only one on the market that I’m aware of that has the ‘blocker’ for being able to use it as a standalone reservoir, or you can remove it to add a DDC pump. I wish that the aluminum heatsink style thing on the back wasn’t as thick on the pump (build is in a ghost s1), but for most this is likely a nonissue. I think it looks nice with the nickel reflective backing vs the clear acrylic of the R160C as well. Also, nice touch that the bottom stop ports are recessed. You cannot directly attach a fitting here (at least for 16mm tubes), but it means that the plugs don’t protrude at all which is awesome. Price at around $90 is also very reasonable imo. EK’s FLT style reservoirs with the ddc mount option are more expensive.Only real nuisance is that as others have mentioned, bleeding is kind of a pain. The way it’s set up causes bubbles to be trapped right above the inlet of the pump (where the flow path ‘snakes’). This causes the bubbles to get sucked back into the intake and recirculate back through the loop if you pulse the pump again before tilting the case. Not a huge deal, just something to note

Easily the best looking reservoir available, fit and finish is absolutely worth the price. Comes with 2 seperate LED modules so you can wire it whatever way is possible with your hardware. Came with extra hardware and seals, the mount included did not work out of box the with my case (Thermaltake Core P90) but it only took very minimal modification to make work.Accepts DDC form pumps and is so quiet that once the all the air is purged from your system you cant actually tell if it is running without touching the res or installing a flow wheel.Another reviewer points out a flaw in the port design, and though it is a little flawed with the pump inlet pulling water from the same area the inlet flows allowing some air bubbles to be pulled right back into the loop it only took 8 hours of leak testing to have the system completely purged of air.I will be updating this 6months to a year later to retouch on the long term durability/any other issues. But for now it is absolutely a good deal for me

Looks nice and isn't so bad in price since you get a bracket and a rgb strip included in the price unlike EKWB. It has multiple ways of mounting it but I just set it to its regular configuration. The rgb is controlled thru the motherboard or a phanteks case so if you have any phanteks rgb parts they will all work . Also there are a total of 5 ports so you can easily make a drain port and also install a temperature sensor port as well.The only negative thing I have weirdly the design and that is only because it's really complicated to make a tight hardline tube bend too and from the reservoir. Also it says it supports ddc and d5 pumps but the d5 is a standalone so only ddc pumps will directly attach to it.Overall it's a good flexible reservoir that will get the job done, just not a big fan of Amazon's ddc pump selection.

If it weren't for the single engineering flaw, this would be a 5 star review. Let me get one thing straight, this thing is absolutely magnificent, probably the best looking res I have seen. The construction is solid, the visuals are astounding, the quality is way up there, I would even say second to none. All of this brought down by one major flaw. An engineering oversight to be certain, the inlets do not allow proper venting of air, I would estimate that between 50 and 60% of the air in the system is recycled into the system, and as micro bubbles (making it much worse). If you reference the stock photo, which I have so crudely drawn on, you will see how the inlets function 1a. and 1b. both flow to the same tube, and the water and air both go down the intake tube for the impeller and into the res, 2. goes directly into the intake tube of the impeller, and nearly 100% of the air goes right back into the loop when using this as the inlet. 3 is just the output tube for going out to the loop. If they had allowed the intake tube to go directly into the res this would solve this problem.The second picture is my system as it sits as of this writing, that res is so, so beautiful. Just be warned that it will probably take a month or two to cycle all of the air out of this system as this sits... that's not going to stop me from using it though.

Installs great inside of the PHANTEKS EVOLV SHIFT MINI ITX case on a BLACK ICE 140MM radiator in a PUSH configuration.Took a while (and many amazon returns :-( ) to find a decent radiator + pump + res combo that would fit in that weird shaped, tight case! With this reservoir/pump combo, I'm able to cool a 2080 SUPER gpu and a Ryzen 3800X to acceptable levels on a slim 280MM radiator. The res looks AMAZING through the PHANTEKS EVOLV SHIFT side glass panel with UV purple coolant from Koolance.I also like the fact that it comes with a bracket to mount right on a fan with not gimmicks, additional equipment, etc.... it JUST WORKS. The included bracket mounts directly on the radiator fan SECURELY and CLEANLY. Compare this to other manufacturers who nickel and dime you for cables, common mounting brackets, etc. Good on you PHANTEKS.

It's a great looking reservoir with good packaging, but the tolerance where the pump mounts is wrong. The reservoir itself hits the pump impeller causing the pump to not spin. I had to hand sand the reservoir to create enough clearance for the pump to actually spin.

Great res, would highly recommended it for anyone going water cooling

This is a superb piece except for the design around the pump inlet (I'm using it as a res-pump combo) pretty much directs the majority of air bubbles right back into the pump so bleeding air takes forever. A better design (especially with that much res above the pump) would forego that channel and let the air bubbles rise, separating the return from the pump inlet.Other than that, as I said, this is a solid, well made, reservoir.