A Closer Look - Inside

To gain access to the insides of the Hades, simply remove the pair of thumb screws holding each panel in place and pull the latter off. The side fan does not have a proper label on it, but it looks like a handwritten model and rating on a Martech sticker.


The interior of the Hades is completely black - another feature quickly becoming commonplace with mainstream enclosures. The cables have been pre-routed behind the mainboard tray and out the bottom opening. There are plastic locks on each of the external drive bays, with exception of the bottom three. This means that even though only four bays are accessible from the outside, there are locks for six of the nine actual bays. That does not make much sense, as you do not want your hard drives being held in place by simple plastic locks.


There is nothing out of the ordinary for the front drive bays. They are formed by two metal sheets running down the front area of the chassis. As it is obvious from the outside, the bottom five bays are covered by the 200 mm intake fan. This one also has white fan blades but sports red LEDs in the frame along with a proper NZXT sticker in the center. Quickly fast forwarding to the end for a second here: after turning everything on I was startled by two consecutive popping noises coming from the front cooling unit. Turns out once I turned things on, two blades just decided to do their own thing, breaking off and flying through the chassis. So I took a close look at the above picture to see if I could spot any damage or if I was the culprit by damaging the fan during the review. Turns out, that the unit was already cracked at the base of the two blades as you can see clearly in the image above. NZXT should really consider procuring their fans from a different manufacturer with better quality control.


NZXT has placed four little rubber domes on the floor of the chassis. The power supply rests on these, which in turn stop any vibration from this area of the computer. Above that are the seven expansion slots, with normal, black screws holding each cover in place. Moving on up, we have the 120 mm fan as well as the 140 mm ceiling one. Both draw air out of the chassis, recreating the same air flow as if a PSU was present above the CPU area.


The cables are nothing out of the ordinary. Both those leading to the chassis power, reset and LEDs as those to the top I/O are of the standard variety. NZXT has also included a simple temperature display in the Hades. The three diodes along with the Molex connector to power the fan controller are also easy to spot. Each of the thermal diodes are clearly labeled, but since the exterior display does not have said labels, you can use them anywhere you want.