Assembly

Sadly, I ran into a problem during the first step of assembly. Due to the ceiling fan, the large Noctua CPU cooler did not fit. This means that users of such 120 mm tower units will have to rotate it by 90 degrees as I did, or take out the 140 mm fan. Once the board is in place, the CPU cooler barely fits, as the top nobs of the heat pipes almost touch the side panel of the case. This is a general problem of many OEM rooted enclosures out there and the Lexa S is no exception.


The hardrive uses a tried and true method of screw-less installation. Simply place the plastic rails on the drive and slide it into place until it locks down with a snap. This system is available from numerous other manufacturers as well and is a general feature from OEMs passed down to the various brands.


The optical drives are pushed into the appropriate bay and then screwed down by hand with the included thumb screws. Very quick and simple.


Installing the power supply does still require traditional screws. There is plenty of space for longer units so you can easily stick a 1500WW or 2000W PSU into the Lexa S.


Once everything is installed, there is very little cable mess within the case. This is due to the holes in the mainboard tray which you may use to route the cabling through. Another helping factor is that the hard drive connectors face away from the window, making it easy to hide any cables in that area.

Finished Looks

The installed optical drive bay fits perfectly into the Lexa S and upon turning the chassis on I looked for the "ambient light" which has been advertised. No doubt NZXT is using the same light source embedded into the front door to light the drives, but I could not find it. As you can see, the unit is turned on, but there are no lights on the inside of the open door. Maybe NZXT means the lighting rod on the front of the chassis? Your guess is as good as mine, but these lighting accents are certainly nice and well placed from a designer's point of view.


A green LED lights up as as soon as you turn on the PC. This is the hard drive activity LED. NZXT has also included LEDs in the side fan to light up the interior of the chassis behind the slightly tinted window.