Packaging and Accessories

As with Phanteks' other Glacier products we have seen, the Glacier R160 packaging provides a premium unboxing experience, which makes for a good first impression before we even see the Glacier R160. A thick two-piece cardboard box with a dark blue and black color scheme greets us. The company and product name are really all we see, along with a label on the side for logistics, and there are two seals on the side that help keep the two pieces together and the rest of the contents inside in place.


Cut open the seals and open the box to reveal the reservoir placed into a shaped cut foam piece similar to a jewelry box. The inside of the top piece is lined with black felt as well for some protection against scratches and shipping and handling hassles. We see that there is a good amount of foam on all sides of the product, so good job with the overall packaging here. There are cutouts to help remove the reservoir, and removing it, we see the accessories underneath this compartment, along with another slit cutout where one more accessory is snugly kept in place.


This particular accessory is an RGB LED strip, which does not come pre-installed, but is part of the installation process. As with other such instances, the components are all on a hard PCB with the Phanteks logo on one side, three cutouts which will aid in installation, and twelve RGB SMD LEDs. There are some pieces of sticky tape with covers on them that need to be peeled off, as well as a female connector on one end where a cable will presumably be plugged in.


There are plenty of other accessories that come with the Glacier R160, not the least of which is a useful manual that goes over the installation and use of the reservoir as a standalone unit as well as with a DDC pump. It is light on details, however, and I can definitely see which parts newcomers can potentially find confusing due to the isometric view used for the illustrations. For those curious, an online copy can be found here. Two sets of mounting hardware come in marked plastic pouches, and these include an Allen key, four self-tapping screws to help mount the entire system, two short hex head screws, and two slightly longer hex head screws for the LED strip, and four long hex head screws for a DDC pump if you go that route. There is also a metal mounting bracket that has foam pads on a side with a gap in between, and legs that jut out in the corners, which have holes corresponding to fan-hole spacings for 120 and 140 mm fans.


The last pouch contains the RGB cables used to power and control the LED strip we saw before, and here we get an RGB cable that connects to the strip directly, which in turn connects to the RGB motherboard/case adapter cable. This can be used to connect the strip to a compatible RGB LED header on a motherboard, for example, or other Phanteks products that work with it as well.