Silence may be golden, but simplicity is like diamond: clear and instantly impressive. Some computing manufacturers have done very well with pursuing an ethic of simplicity. (Apple comes to mind as an easy example.) But simplicity is easier to describe than design.
When it comes toPC cases, simplicity doesn't mean six panels and a hole for a power supply. It means providing the right functionality to a given audience in a way that is unpresuming, flexible, clean, and intuitive. It's easy to spill over into excess, though; witness the swaths of alien-themed, mecha-themed PC cases that flooded the market earlier in the late '00s and early '10s from the likes of Thermaltake, Cooler Master, Raidmax, and many others. Prices: Usually $100 to $150. Design overkill: Excessive!
Or you can go to the other extreme, as with theLian Li PC-X2000FN. This $500 aluminum behemoth might as well be carved from onyx. It's a stunning, excessive, superlative homage to top-end enthusiast perfection, with every feature (and others besides) that a buyer could ask for...five years ago. Lian Li's workmanship was flawless, as usual, but this model sought to deliver a whole shipping container full of benefits to a niche audience.
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原NZXT H440,我们回顾了2014年,sits almost exactly in the middle between these two extremes, leaning more toward the former on price (it listed for $120 in black, $140 in white at debut, and now sells for $149.99 in green Razer garb as we wrote this in January 2015) and the latter on features and build quality.
As a follow-on to NZXT cases like the similar-looking, starkNZXT H630(Opens in a new window), the primary original intent behind the H440 design was flexible cooling. But second, cable management needed to be a higher priority, including for people who bought MicroATX boards for their significantly larger cases. Why would somebody put a tiny board in a big box? Often, to pair it with massive amounts of local storage. But—and here was the kicker—while some people wanted a lot of local terabyte capacity, both magnetic and solid state, not very many still wanted optical drives. It's a streaming, subscription-based world now. Why tie up all of that cubic case volume for something many people no longer used?
The H630 looked good but failed to impress. We asked NZXT marketing specialist Mitchell Podlaha for his take on it. "After a blind vote, nearly everyone found that the design was uninspired and decidedly normal," he said. "After 95 percent voted in opposition of the incumbent design, we elected to scrap the current design and overhaul it to bring something that hadn't been seen yet. And this is essentially when the H440 was born."
The H440 case did well in our original review, earning four stars and an Editors' Choice nomination. One of the quibbles we had, though, was with the brassy NZXT branding through the side window. And that's why we were doubly intrigued when NZXT announced a special "Razer Limited Edition" of this case. The same essential guts and features, but with the highly recognizable black-and-green branding of the maker of high-end PC peripherals.
我们可以看到这个底盘拉兹作为一个巨大的吸引er faithful, and it shares many of the pluses of the original H440. And it will match Razer gaming peripherals to a T. But it has a new stumble or two that we'll get to in the course of this review, and a higher price.
Design
You encounter the most striking part of the H440 right there on its front face: the fact that there reallyisno face. It's just a blank wall of steel with a dead-center Razer logo and a stylish cut-away swoop on the top-left.
乍一看,你可能会认为这个小组是一个door you swing aside to reveal a column of 5.25-inch external bays waiting within, but...no. There is no hinge and no door. If you tug at the panel, it will pull away to reveal a very large magnetically-attached air filter. Behind the filter sit three pre-installed 120mm intake fans…
As you can see, it's all about airflow; there are no 5.25-inch internal bays here at all.
Let's move around the case. The left panel is dominated by a large, clear window spanning from the roof to the floor of the interior and from the card slots to the back of the drive cages...
On one hand, this is good and attractive if you're going to keep a clean interior. (If you got it, flaunt it, yes?) That clean look is enhanced by the fact that NZXT fully enclosed the power-supply chamber in the case…
As you can see here, the side of the power supply chamber facing the window bears a long strip of plastic bearing the Razer logo, backlit by green LEDs.
With the original H440, we contended that this lit-up strip (which, there, was a backlit NZXT logo on a prominent red field) was a tad overstated. And of course, lighting is a subjective issue. But here, Razer fans will love this glowing tribute to their pet brand. (We're not particular Razer fanboys and fangirls here, but wedohave to admit it looks groovy.) It looks even better viewed through the smoked-plastic side window.
We also like that the Razer H440 integrated two additional green LEDs on the back of the chassis. They're less decorative than practical, though. One shines across the I/O ports, and the other across the PCI Express slots...
An on/off button for the lights rests next to the I/O panel. Anyone who has ever tried to plug a cable somewhere into a poorly lit set of ports will understand that these two LEDs are an awesome feature, although users with a lot of cables plugged in may still have to cope with finding a free port in the shadows. Still, points to NZXT in trying to address this universal pain point.
As for the green lighting and logo-ing all-around: It's billboarding, of course, but that's the whole idea here. If you're looking at this case specifically for the Razer branding (and we're not sure why you'd want this chassis if you're not a fan of the look), then you'll find the extra-long window and the Razer logos one of the top draws of this case.
In addition to the LEDs, the back panel features a single 140mm exhaust fan grill, seven vented slot covers, two rubber-flanged holes for water-cooler tubing, and four thumbscrews securing a tray that holds in the power supply…
Note that these power-supply thumbscrews, unlike the pairs securing each side panel as well as the internal drive trays, will come entirely out. We appreciate that the panel screws stay tethered in their holes so they can't get lost, but they were nonetheless our least favorite items on the case. It may have been exclusive to our test unit, but we had a hard time with the side-panel thumbscrews on this case. The machining of the holes, or the screws themselves, was off, and we had difficulty getting them back in their holeseverytime, even with a screwdriver. As we turned them, they kept skewing off to one side. We ended up having to resort to a pair of pliers to get them in, and we rather dreaded taking the side panel off each time (which, when you're building and troubleshooting a new PC, is rather often).
The underside of the case features a convenient, generously large slide-out air filter that covers the power supply's intake grill. The four feet are plenty tall for adequate airflow, but they are plastic with rubber ends, rather than solid rubber. (We prefer the latter variety for durability and vibration dampening, but they are harder to find.) New on the underside of the H440 Razer, versus the original H440, is a pair of LED strips that light up green, giving the case a cool green "ground effects" glow from beneath the tower.
Finally, the H440's top panel earned our respect, as it did in the original. The front edge features headphone and mic jacks, two USB 3.0 ports, and two USB 2.0 ports, aligned along the jaunty cut in the top of the case…
However, these are not wired to the top panel. Rather, the panel has cut-outs that slip right over the ports, which are hard-mounted to the inner chassis. This way, you can lift up on the forward lip that juts from the top panel's edge and lift away the top panel without worrying about wire connections. We appreciated that; usually, when building, this or a front panel ends up hanging off by a harness of wires that feed the ports.
The top, front, and side panels all come layered with sound-dampening foam on the inside, which we like as well, although know that the clear window (which, of course, lacks any foam) does hamper this effort toward silence a little.
Features and Bays
Okay, now let's call out the elephant in the corner, which we alluded to earlier: The H440 hasno5.25-inch bays. None. And we can't applaud NZXT enough for taking this bold step.
No doubt, some will object that they still use optical discs, and that's fine. But this author maintains from four to six PCs at any given time in his house, and he's been able to service all of their needs for the last two years with just a single external USB optical drive. If you've already gotten comfy with disc-less ultrabooks or Chromebooks, this won't be a shocker.
Instead of conventional drive cages, NZXT gives us five screwed-in, 3.5-inch drive trays, each spaced roughly two and a half inches apart. You can see them here in the shadows, at the right...
These are rigid metal, and each comes pre-installed with four rubber grommets, positioned for 3.5-inch drives, to fight vibration. If you need more room for long graphics cards (up to 15.7 inches long), you can simply remove a tray or two to clear the way. Each tray also comes drilled for mounting a 2.5-inch drive to its bottom, so you can mix and match drive types. In addition, you'll find mounting points for another two 2.5-inch drives atop the main chamber floor (which is to say, on the roof of the power-supply chamber). If that's not enough, the floor of the case behind the power supply area comes pre-drilled for one more 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch drive.
We wish NZXT would have put rubber strips on the power supply's rests, but this is a small oversight in the midst of a formidable array of cable-management features. Half-loops for securing zip ties are scattered all over the motherboard tray, and you'll spy cut-outs aplenty, including three with rubber flanges running alongside the drive trays. These last three cut-outs actually sit on an angled slope, with the motherboard bed being closer to the right panel than the edge of the drive trays. This cleverly provides more space above the motherboard, while still allowing room to route thicker bundles of cable. You can see the slant here...
NZXT opted for cable routing in place of higher-end possibilities, such as a passive hard drive backplane, which would have been infeasible given the current tray arrangement. At the $150 price point this case sits at, this is a fair decision.
We do like the inclusion of a 10-port hub for three-wire devices mounted smack in the middle of the motherboard tray's underside. (You can see the hub in the above image, as well.) The idea is that you can use this as a central power nexus for items like case fans and LED strips. Five connectors on it remain open for additional cooling and illumination gear, but keep in mind that there's a 30-watt cumulative maximum for the hub.
The three front-mounted fans run at 1,200rpm. The 140mm fan at the rear hums at a constant 1,000rpm. All screw onto the case without any grommets or other vibration dampening, although the little screws do have small springs on them. A close look at the rear fan reveals that it actually screws into cutout slots rather than holes, allowing you fine-tune the fan's position in relation to the CPU. To varying degrees, this is also true of the H440's other fan mountings, which is part of how the front and top panels can both accept water-cooling radiators of up to 360mm. If you put a radiator on top, though, keep in mind that you will only be able to place a fan in the forward half of the case, as the back half will be situated too close to the CPU's heatsink fan.
Installation
As noted earlier, we're not fans of the ABS plastic used in some places in the H440. But NZXT did a perfect job of rolling the interior metal edges and making the H440 very spacious and comfortable to work on. You will want to make use of the extra space behind the power supply and all of the tie-downs, because there isn't much room between the motherboard tray and the foam covering the right panel. Put much of a cable bundle back there, and you'll likely mash the foam and possibly crimp your wires.
Another benefit to ditching the 5.25-inch bays was that it allowed designers to run air intake up the full height of the case, so you now have cool air coming in and blowing straight across the RAM, graphics, and CPU, not having to snake its way from the bottom of the case, past the hot hard drives, and up to the CPU. However, despite all of that air intake power from the three big front fans, all air must enter from the sides and bottom of the front panel along a narrow, grilled strip.
In practice, this seems to work. You don't hear the hiss of airflow constricted as it tries to enter the case through too small of a space. Similarly, temperatures all seemed normal during operation and gaming, so we're confident that the H440's thermals are in line, at least in our test config with a Sandy Bridge Core i7 processor and a single GeForce GTX 760 card. We're only giving a slight note of unease here and cautioning you to keep an eye on noise and temps if piling on the components and power draw. We like straight-line airflow, and sucking everything in through a narrow strip, while apparently fine and all, just spooks us a bit.
Conclusion
The original H440 was tough, attractive, and a breeze to build in. It cut a couple of questionable corners, but nothing too egregious, and we appreciated all of the sound foam, even if adding a few more pads and grommets wouldn't have hurt.
For an extra $10 to $30 over the original H440, here, you gain a very different look, one which would be a killer complement to a set of Razer input devices and gives off a moody, menacing aura even if you don't mod it an iota more than it comes. Whether that's worth the extra money is directly proportional to how big a fan you are of the Razer branding. Ourselves, we do think that a $30 premium for a paint job, logos, and a few extra LEDs in a case this price is a bit rich, but we've paid plenty more to get plenty less, at times. In that sense, the original H440 is tough competition.
即便如此,我们喜欢看,即使如此也”t perfect and won't be a match for every buyer. We're willing to chalk up our teeth-gnashing experience with the side-panel screws to our specific review sample, but beyond that, this is a chassis that demands you do your homework before you buy. The key limitation—the lack of an optical drive bay—will be lauded by some and a deal-breaker for others. And if you want it to look as spiffy through the side window as the pictures here of the bare case suggest, you'll have to be painstaking with your cable routing.
But for those who don't mind going CD- and DVD-less, this case is one of the better "statement" cases we've seen in the past year, and a refreshing change from the overdesigned, sci-fi-themed chassis we've seen so much of in the recent past.
[Editors' Note: Parts of this review were taken from our review of the original H440 by William Van Winkle.]
A DIY case for PC builders, the H440 Designed by Razer packs lots of smarts and flexibility into a midpriced tower that bleeds menace and power. (It's long on storage and cooling capabilities, too.)
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