A Closer Look

To remove both sides, you will have to take off the rear plastic "cage" by unscrewing four screws. NZXT has chosen to keep the inside clean and robust. The layout is quite traditional, but has a 90° rotated hard drive cage. This way even GeForce 8800 GTX/Ultras will fit just fine inside the case. The steel construction is very sturdy as 1 mm thick metal is used.


The four 5.25 inch drive bays can easily be accessed from the front of the case. All sharp corners are rounded, so you will not cut yourself during assembly. These bays can be equipped with drives by using the included rail system. You will also find holes for screws in the external drive bays, just in case you want to install some front panel device which is unusually short or does not have the same placement of holes as a floppy or optical drives.


The mainboard connectors are the same kind you would find in most cases. NZXT includes all the different audio connectors, so you will not have to worry about any incompatibility. It is interesting how much time NZXT has dedicated to securing the case for shipping. Even the cables ship in a thin bag to avoid scratches on the side window. In addition to the usual cables, there are three temperature diodes which are clearly labled as CPU, HDD and SYS.


As mentioned before, the PCI slots can be reused in this case or any other. The installation of expansion and graphic cards is competely screwless. In the middle, the rear fan is one of three 120 mm fans inside this case, all of which have a Molex connectors. While this is fine for LED fans, as these need a bit more power, it would have been nice to see mainboard headers on all other fans inside the case. Even though it is listed as optional, the case does have a 120 mm fan in the front of the chassis.


There is an 80 mm fan on the ceiling as well. This one is in plain black just like the 12 cm fan cooling the hard drives in the front of the Lexa Blackline. Another oddity can be found on the bottom of the case, an airvent in the shape of an 80 mm hole. You could possibly mount a fan here as well. NZXT has included a dust filter, just in case you do decide to add one at this location.