A Closer Look - Inside

To gain access to the insides of the chassis, simply remove the black, steel thumb screws holding the side panels in place. As was obvious before, the entire insides correspond to the colors of the exterior, thus the black case has a black interior. NZXT has chosen to go with all black cabling, which basically completes the entire dark theme - well done! There is around 15 mm of space below the mainboard tray, which may not be enough if you fill the chassis to the rim with hardware.


Considering the price of the chassis, you cannot expect to see all new tooling within the case. Instead NZXT has taken existing manufacturing parts and added new features to it. The entire 3.5 inch bays are lined with plastic screwless locks on one side, while they are missing on the other. Above that are the three 5.25 inch bays, which utilize plastic locks as well. It will be interesting to see how well these really hold.


While both types of locks are made of plastic, they do use metal pins to hold drives in place. This should help in general and give additional stability and grip to the entire locking mechanism.


Turning our focus to the rear of the chassis, the bottom PSU bay is very basic. There are no rubber mountings or anti-vibration lining anywhere. I would have like to see at least some lining on the rear of the chassis and also a basic dust filter. Above that are the seven solid, black covers, which are held in place by normal screws so will need a screwdriver after all. In the top, you will find the black framed and white finned 120 mm fan.


All the cables are black as well and of the standard variety. NZXT has also moved from using an external USB 3.0 cable to an internal plug. Make sure your board has such a connector, otherwise you may be out of luck and can only use the USB 2.0 connectivity in the front.


Before we dive into the assembly, let us take a quick look at the top fan. It is also of the same color as the one in the rear. These should correspond to the ones you can buy separately, thus allowing you to continue the look and feel of the chassis even when adding more cooling units. You may also install an additional fan in the flooring of the chassis, if your PSU is short enough.