The
Case
Outside
the box, the Zero captures the eye with its appearance.
It is not overly big, neither too flashy, yet
exudes a feeling of elegance. Not only that, it
is light too weighting no more than a heavy duty
power supply unit, at around 7.35Kg. The front
door opens to the right which is reasonable since
most cases are placed at the right side of the
desk. The door is magnetic, so no latches or locks
are visible. The top of the door is also a smoked
see-through window, which allows an LCD 5.25”
device to be visible when the door is closed.
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When
we heard from NZXT that the Zero is the ‘Ultimate
cooling chassis’, we did not expect that
they actually turned this case into a large wind
tunnel! It comes with eight fans preinstalled,
seven of which are 120mm fans and a sole 80mm
fan. Four of them are mounted at the side panel
alone, blowing air to all of the components inside
the case. Two can be found at the rear, functioning
as exhausts. One 120mm fan is present at the front
of the case, blowing fresh air over your precious
hard disk drives. The only 80mm fan of the case
is present at the top, functioning as an additional
exhaust.
Despite
the ridiculous number of fans, you probably will
be amazed to hear that the case is exceedingly
quiet. With all of the fans working at maximum
speed, all that can be heard is a soft sound of
air movement. Since we would like our case to
be quiet with the true meaning of the word, we
ascertained that all of the discernable noise
came from the top 80mm fan. Cutting power to that
fan made the case quieter than a coffin.
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All
of the fans used are branded as ‘NZXT’
fans, but since NZXT do not make fans we suspect
that these come from a known OEM manufacturer.
As we mentioned before the 120mm fans are quiet,
but the top 80mm fan generates some noise. Additionally,
it is placed so that a normal power supply unit
will barely fit. A longer unit such as some high
power Enermax and Thermaltake would most probably
not fit. It seems that this small fan is more
trouble than it’s worth, so we would rather
remove it completely. The two rear fans in conjuction
with the powersupply fan will be more than capable
of expelling the hot air.
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The inside of the Zero is quite spacious. There
is a lot of clearance between the motherboard
and the rest of the components; however the layout
of the case makes it nothing more than a larger
midi-tower case. There is little room to hide
cables behind the motherboard tray, or anywhere
else. You probably will have to gather them in
an empty 5.25” slot. Thankfully, the hard
disk drives cage is placed sideward, which will
probably help a lot with the cable clutter. This
way a long VGA card will not be obstructed by
the hard disk drives or their cables.
At
the bottom of the case, a filtered air hole is
present to help with the airflow, but no fan.
One could place an 80mm fan there most likely,
but with the airflow created by the 120mm fans
and the size of the case we do not see why someone
would want to do so.
The
cables inside the NZXT Zero were thankfully limited
only those we expected to be found. Besides the
power switch, reset and LED light cables, there
are three cables for the front USB, Firewire and
Audio ports. It was very thoughtful of NZXT to
make the front port cables ending to a single
connector but also expanding to individual pins.
This way assembly can be far easier but you will
also not face a problem if for some reason your
motherboard is not using a standard pin layout
for the internal ports.
Performance
We found the chassis was great at keeping our
high end enthusiast system components cool and
we recorded ambient temperatures inside the case
only 1-2c higher than room temperature.
