A Closer Look - Inside

To gain access to the inside of the case, you need to remove a single thumb screw, which holds the top cover. It would have been great to see two screws a bit further apart, as that would not allow any play of the cover. The top comes off quite easily after you have removed the screw. This is also where I noticed that all the screws on the review sample where pulled incredibly tight, so I had to use the screw driver to get it loose. The same goes for the ones holding the mainboard tray in place. After those were removed, the tray comes out perfectly fine.


You are also meant to remove the sides of the case, but two smaller screws hold each panel in place. Fitting a correct bit and then trying to remove the screw yielded an immidiate stripping of the screw. This made removal of the panels impossible. Three of the four screws were screwed in so tight that they did not come out. While this made installation harder, it did not become impossible. In contrast the screws holding the drive bays of the Thermaltake Lanbox in place, are smaller, but widthstood repeated removal and replacement without any problems. This is definitely an area where NZXT needs to improve the case. The drive bays of the silver Rogue are kept in black to give it some uniform look within the enclosure itself. There are four hard drive bays on either side of the external ones. This is by far the most of any large production cube case. I only know of one other cube case which can handle as many hard drives.


To install the external drives, you will need to remove the alumium drive bay covers. These are secured by small screws, which means that you need to take off the entire front first, to gain access to these screws. While this is not a large drawback, it adds a further step to installation. NZXT should simply keep the top drive bay open, and include the cover and screws seperately. That way you are good to go when installing just a single drive - a configuration which should suffice for most scenarios.


Another great feature of the Rogue is its airflow. It can hold up to five 120 mm fans. NZXT chose to include three. One on each side (intake and exaust, to move air sideways across the mainboard) and one in the back. The addition of dust filters for the intake fans is a great feature, one we would like to see on more cases. All fans come with Molex connectors, it would have been nice to see mainboard headers with adapters to Molex. This would give the user the greatest possible choice when considering powering the fans while attaining the lowest possible noise level.