NZXT H5 Flow

[Darksaber]

The NZXT H5 Flow is not your run-of-the-mill chassis. Sporting a simple but beautiful design, it manages to be very pleasing to the eye like its predecessor, while offering modern core features we've come to expect from mid-towers, thus giving you a solid choice if design is what you are going for.

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[Iain Saturn]

Looks excellent

Considering this or a comparable Fractal.

Anyone have a preference?

 

[HairyLobsters]

How is the angled fan suppose to draw air in?

 

[Chrispy_]

I just sold my beautiful old NZXT H440NE in extremely hard wearing matte black finish. Amazing build quality, and four USB ports.
IIRC I paid £99 for it and that included four fans, white-LED case lighting and a powered PWM repeater hub.

Not only was it astonishingly quiet when fitted with all seven fans at sub-800rpm, it had rubber-damped drive sleds and heavy-duty soundproofing on four panels. Styling was top-notch IMO and has aged well when you consider it's almost a 9-year-old design at this point:



I know inflation is a thing, but NZXT really have gone downhill a lot, despite this new H5 being a half-decent case as the third major revision to fix the H500-series' initial problems in the current fustercluck of a market. If the H440 build-quality and level of included hardware were sold today, it would probably be a $249 product....

 

[wheresmycar]

How is the angled fan suppose to draw air in?

this is how... bottom intake with duct

Its a 2-in-1 solution... directing air towards the GPU and should the need arise, a toilet lol

 

[PLAfiller]

It looks really nice, makes up for a clean build. It ain't a universal fighter though. You wanna no-ODD, glass towards the front to-see-your-stuff, not too quiet build->you are good to go.

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

sub $100 mid tower with ducting for a fan is kinda neat IMO.

 

[bonehead123]

NZXT has gone great lengths to ensure as many elements within the white H5 Flow are actually white. The only aspects that are not are the 3-pin fan header, spacers for the motherboard, and Velcro strips AND the internal cables

So in other words, a so-called "WHITE" case that aint... cause the last time I checked into math class, 99.75% is less than 100%.....

Not sure about the fan header, but HELLO NZXT, usb/power cables, spacers & velcro are all made in white, time for you to make a trip to your mfgr's warehouses/assembly plants....

 

[Chrispy_]

sub $100 mid tower with ducting for a fan is kinda neat IMO.

I hope this is the first step manufacturers take towards more comprehensive ducting for the entire GPU. Shrouds and ducts do amazing work in 1U and 2U rack servers, it's a shame that the ATX PC doesn't really have any options for that. HP/Dell used to dabble in shrouds and ducting but only to save costs and reduce the number of fans, not to actually improve cooling.

I know one-size-fits all isn't going to work for the huge range of graphics cards available, but adjustable shrouds made out of two sliding plastic sleeves aren't a million miles away from this. If you could get fresh, filtered, outside air direct to your GPU fan intakes and make a half-assed attempt to seal it, you'd likely drop GPU temps and fan noise whilst completely eliminating recirculation of exhaust air.

 

[wheresmycar]

I hope this is the first step manufacturers take towards more comprehensive ducting for the entire GPU. Shrouds and ducts do amazing work in 1U and 2U rack servers, it's a shame that the ATX PC doesn't really have any options for that. HP/Dell used to dabble in shrouds and ducting but only to save costs and reduce the number of fans, not to actually improve cooling.

I know one-size-fits all isn't going to work for the huge range of graphics cards available, but adjustable shrouds made out of two sliding plastic sleeves aren't a million miles away from this. If you could get fresh, filtered, outside air direct to your GPU fan intakes and make a half-assed attempt to seal it, you'd likely drop GPU temps and fan noise whilst completely eliminating recirculation of exhaust air.

I second that!!

I've seen a bunch of reddit posts with mods using something like a NR200/SAMA/etc, with a duct sandwiched between the GPU and bottom case fans and then reporting pretty amazing temp differences. Some go as far as removing the stock GPU fans, replaced with larger and quieter 120mm units... the end result -10c to -15c (i've seen a couple of reports seeing as much as -20c drops but the card was undervolted with very little/none performance compromise - according to them).

 

[Chrispy_]

Even before my engineering degree, I learned the power of ducting by running my CPU without a fan. I just had two 80mm exhausts in my system and I used PVC pipe from the side panel to the CPU heatsink.

"Passive" cooling on a 55% overclock (the legendary Celeron 300A where a sub-50% overclock was indicative of incompetence)

 

[PLSG08]

Slapping an angled fan in the bottom chamber to make up for poor thermal design isn't really innovation lmao. Idk why NZXT is so hell bent on making really poor thermally designed cases.

 

[Chrispy_]

Slapping an angled fan in the bottom chamber to make up for poor thermal design isn't really innovation lmao. Idk why NZXT is so hell bent on making really poor thermally designed cases.

I don't see anything poor about the thermal design of this case. It's an open-front, well-vented design like many other leading thermal designs that use 3x120mm or 2x140 intakes.

Honestly, if anything it's a way to squeeze even more intake to the most critical area of any modern PC - the GPU's intake fans. Adding this fan at an angle means that you get more intake than would otherwise be possible in a case this compact - most things this size are limited to 3x120mm intakes, but the H5 manages 2x140 + 1x120 and that's better than lots of other highly-rated designs, in terms of raw CFM...

 

[PLSG08]

I don't see anything poor about the thermal design of this case. It's an open-front, well-vented design like many other leading thermal designs that use 3x120mm or 2x140 intakes.

Honestly, if anything it's a way to squeeze even more intake to the most critical area of any modern PC - the GPU's intake fans. Adding this fan at an angle means that you get more intake than would otherwise be possible in a case this compact - most things this size are limited to 3x120mm intakes, but the H5 manages 2x140 + 1x120 and that's better than lots of other highly-rated designs, in terms of raw CFM...

Benchmarks results have shown that having the angled duct were in some cases performed comparably to a 3x120 front intake case. The problem with the H5 Flow is it pretty much blocked another major area where the angled fan could've pulled in more air for the GPU

If they also had that part meshed and had a stronger fan that pulled in more air then it could've performed better than the average case. Its a good idea nonetheless, but still very gimmicky compared to the majority of 3x120mm front intake cases that performs much better thermally than this.

 

[trsttte]

Benchmarks results have shown that having the angled duct were in some cases performed comparably to a 3x120 front intake case. The problem with the H5 Flow is it pretty much blocked another major area where the angled fan could've pulled in more air for the GPU
View attachment 267834

If they also had that part meshed and had a stronger fan that pulled in more air then it could've performed better than the average case. Its a good idea nonetheless, but still very gimmicky compared to the majority of 3x120mm front intake cases that performs much better thermally than this.

That's all true but if you want a fully open front panel you can buy it from fractal, corsair, lian-li, etc.

NZXT has used and re-used this design for years and it's their thing, at least they finally came around to mesh front panels, took them long enough.

I don't understand if the toilet bowl was made for the meme on purpose or if no one noticed until it came to market but damn... Ducts are cool but they could have put a mesh on top to make it less visible (large mesh to barely reduce air flow but cover the bowl). Or make the entire psu shroud of a finer mesh and let overall pressure take advantage of it. I guess diy pc market is a good place to use memes to market a product but isn't a toilet bowl a bit too far?