BuLLg0d

May 10, 2010 at 8:20pm

No one tells you how slim this case is. If you have a high heatsink
or an enclosed liquid cooling option you are going to have to remove the
200mm side fan. I have the Asestek 510c enclosed liquid cooler on my
core i7 980X Extreme Edition cpu on a Gigabyte mobo and between the
120mm radiator attached to the rear fan and tha arc of the coolers
tubing, the fan had to go. It just would not fit. I configured my pc on
line and ordered on line after reading reviews of this case and no where
did I see that I would lose the 200mm side fan. Cyberpower was great
with the build though, they rerouted the side fans controller to the
upper exhaust fan so I still have control of two fans within the system.

The front Door does not come off. The power button is hidden at the
crest of the "V" on the door. The silver button on the panel inside the
door is the reset button. Also on the door is the hdd activity light and
the tri temperature readout so no, the door has to stay on. It won't
completely stay open either, it tends to like to be halfway open or
closed completely so if you are accessing your optical drives all the
time you will hate the case. 

 

It is stuffy inside too but well designed. You can put a lot of stuff
inside but it will definately be cramped. With wiring management I
still find it hard to move around in the case to add components because
the spare psu cables have nowehere to go so they take up precious lower
hdd mounting space. A modular psu would work very well in this case. 

 As mentioned above, I have a hex core intel, asestek 510c water
cooling unit,  6 gb of memory, a SATA III hdd, a Blu Ray drive, a dvd/rw
drive and a 12 in one media card reader along with a huge 900 watt psu
and a radeon 5870. it all fits in there and cpu temperatures while in
heavy gaming vary at the CPU between 46 and 49 degrees celcius, the hdd
stays at a chilling 29-32 degrees celcius, and the ambient case
temperature runs around 39 degrees celcius. The cpu averages around 38
degrees celcius when web surfing and other "simple" applications .  I
think of this case as a Porsche, Everything fits in tight but it
performs well. It's no Corsair 800d (You could fit two and a half Hades
cases in one of those) but it sure does cool well, even without the 200
mm side fan. I'm heading to Frys tomorrow to get a second 120mm exhaust
fan for the empty slot at the top of the case..overkill really, but the
mount is there and no one said more air is a bad thing. Don't forget,
NZXT has white fans so if you want to buy that single 120 mm fan that
does not come with the case, Frys carries them and you can buy them
directly from NZXT's website. 

I'd give this case an 8 out of 10. I got what I expected but was a
little dissapointed as well . Great case though for the price. LOVE the
temperature readouts and the manual fan control knobs. Again, if you
hate doors this is not the case for you. If you have a high heatsink or
some sort of enclosed unit liquid cpu cooler your going to have to
remove the side fan completely. The dust cover can still sit and cover
the side panel holes though.Also, even though the case is on risers,
it's still "low" so anything in front of the door higher than say, a
half an inch will have to go. DO NOT place this case on carpet, it will
totally block the lower intake/dustcover on the bottom of the case and
impair if not totally hault, an airflow channel. Being a mid tower,
mines on my desktop so no worries for me.

 

I know this is lengthy, but I also know there are people looking to
hear more about this case. Every review I have found has been about the
case as is, empty. No ones reviewing it in different configurations. If
you have any questions you are welcome to email me at
uncommoninfected@gmail.com .