Assembly

Installing the mainboard is nothing out of the ordinary. Simply place it on the black spacers provided and secure it in place with the black screws. As you can see, even the fairly large Prolimatech Super Mega fits within the chassis. While cable management is not perfect, since the rubber covers are missing, you do have plenty of holes to route cables through.


So, now unto the one part which had me worried. To install a 3.5 inch drive, first remove the plastic lock, slide the drive into place and then put the lock back. I am shocked to say, that the lock actually holds much better than expected - shocked in a good way of course. Sure, system integrators and worried users will still want to secure the drives with a single screw at least, so it is a good thing that NZXT has included enough screws with the Tempest 210. Long graphics cards will block up to three of the hard drive bays though, but the remaining five should be more than enough for most users.


There seems to be a space for a 2.5 inch drive on the floor of the chassis, but upon closer inspection, it seems that someone forgot to turn it 90° before finalizing the tooling. Thus, this bay is actually of no use within the Tempest 210. We have seen the same issue within the Source 220 and it is certainly too bad that NZXT has not fixed this issue yet.


Freeing up a bay is extremely easy, as you simple have to slide the lock to the left to release the drive bay cover allowing you to slide the drive of your choice into the open bay. The locking mechanism is similar for the optical drives. While the lock holds the drive alright, it would make sense to use a single screw for absolute piece of mind and to avoid any annoying vibrations being passed on from the drive to the chassis.


Since there are four screws present for the PSU, you should not have any troubles here. As you can see, a fairly potent unit does not cover the bottom fan slot, so you are still free to install one here.


Once all the components are in place. Two things should become obvious. The NZXT Tempest 210 is no champ when it comes to cable hiding and management. Sure the openings help, but they are not perfect.

Finished Looks

The Tempest 210 makes a good impression when closed up and ready to go. The industrial design is actually quite nifty and works well with the white LED embedded in the very top of the chassis.


There are no real surprises on the other sides of the chassis as everything is accessible and can be found where you would expect it to. The air vents on the side of the chassis line up perfectly with the height of the graphics card, allowing you to cool those with additional fans if you wish.