Cooler Master HAF X NVIDIA Edition Gaming Computer Case Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
2,303 words · ~11 min read
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now this is something I saw in our warehouse and I had to grab one because
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it is a/x NVIDIA edition case so as you
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guys may or may not know from the extreme buyer guide that I did on my ncx
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tech tips Channel I'm a big fan of the half X case I really like it at
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especially at the time of being released it was one of the more interesting new
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and Innovative cases on the market cuz it was one of the first to introduce
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compatibility for certain motherboards that are longer than standard ATX it was
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also one of the first cases or what it was the first case to take that cool
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half appearance and turn it into something that I would truly consider
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worthy of housing an extreme gaming computer so this um cooler Master's done
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a few NVIDIA Edition cases but this is
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probably the slickest looking one and it is the first high-end NVIDIA branded
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case that we've seen from Cooler Master so you know I'm actually G to get the
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cameraman to no let's do the outside of the box first then I'm going to open it
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off camera because this is going to take a little while it's really heavy okay
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rear retaining holes for water cooling nine expansion slots for increased
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expandability we got cable management grommets tool-free hard drive slots
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front 230 mm green LED fan okay we've
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got NVIDIA SLI certified GPU cooling
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system okay this I haven't seen before support for USB 3.0 looks like we got
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two USB 3.0 slots cable cover for clean
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insides and a SATA do for easy installation without removing the side
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panel let me just see if there's anything else we're missing here yep okay so we got five 3 and 1/2 in Drive
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Bays six 5 and 1/4 in Drive
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Bays two of these whatever these are
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okay here's all of our cooling system stuff and let's go ahead and get this thing opened
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up so this is it the half X NVIDIA
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edition if there was any doubt from the color scheme still left in your mind as
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to whether this is an NVIDIA edition case or not you could probably check
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right here and see that there is an NVIDIA logo right on the front of it so
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there let your doubts be uh dismissed
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quite easily okay so here we got our 5 and a/4 inch Bay covers let's do the
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front of the case first we've got all of our front IO and whatnot we've got our
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power switch reset switch as well as an onoff switch that's a toggle switch for
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the fan LED so you can leave the fan on but actually turn the lights off if you
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want to sleep we've got two USB 3.0 ports one eeta one fire wire two USB 2.0
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front microphone as well as front headphon so lots of different IO options
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here at the front I can't remember if this does anything on the half X it
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would appear that it doesn't so that is the front why don't we have a look at
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the top so in the top of the case we've
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got two cooling fans which are each measured at approximately yeah I'm
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checking 200 mm so those are two dual
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those are dual 200 mm fan mounts in the top of the case and I'm going to go
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ahead and uh move it around to this side so on the side we've actually got
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another 200 mm fan Mount here we go okay
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right there and that actually comes with a fan pre-mounted in it so that's going
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to provide all the cooling you could possibly need to your high-end GeForce
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graphics card that you ought to be installing in a case like this you can
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see the window actually has some NVIDIA artwork on it as well and uh it is a
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green tinted window rather than being a straight Clear Window so here if I can
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if I stick my hand in here you can see the color difference between my hand
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behind the Green Glass and my hand not Behind the Green Glass so let's twist it
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around again oh it's heavy though steel construction it weighs I tell you okay
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at the back of the case we find our water cooling grommets we find a 140 mm
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fan with optional 120 mm Mount so that means if you wanted to install something
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like a Corsair h70 you would have the option to do that more ventilation holes
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next to our nine PCI expansion slots and
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a standard bottom mounted ATX power supply make up the back of the case on
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the other side we find a fairly traditional well relatively
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speaking H side panel so it has a/x look
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to it that is the side panel has some shape to it some definition and then we
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find design by Cooler Master which is besides this little tiny logo on the box
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which is way down here at the bottom the only Cooler Master branding on this
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entire product and packaging so next
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thing that we will do is give me a
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second off camera to get these screws loosened okay I got it there we go so
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I'm taking the first side panel off and then in a moment since we can't really
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see a whole lot from this side why don't we do the cable management aspect first
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so we've got a hole here that's going to allow us to take any power supply cables
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we want to run up the back so SATA cables over to the drives SATA cables
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over to the other drives so there's actually here you guys should see this
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because oh the other side panel came off okay well there's the fan and the duct
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that goes on it to make sure that all the air flow is directed at your
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graphics cards all right so we're not going to spend too much time on that but
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I also want to show you this Gap right here so if you want to bring a cable up
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from the bottom you can actually run it up here to your optical drive as well so
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that's going to make sure that cable stays nice and hidden we've got a cutout
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at the back of the motherboard tray that's going to allow us to uh install
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and uninstall any back plate requiring CPU coolers without actually taking the
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motherboard out of the case and we've got a a couple nice silicone grommets
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here you can see these are nice high quality grommets when I go and press on
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them they actually snap right back into place and we've got our yes here we go
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so here's the LED power for our front
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fan so that is controlled by that switch at the top and then here's the actual
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fan power which we can either plug in Via three pin or via the three pin to
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four pin Molex adapter that Cooler Master includes with the case or should
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I say NVIDIA includes with the case very hard to say all right in
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here this looks like it's going to get complicated in a hurry why don't we
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start at the top right and work our way to the back so here we have our toolless
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5 and 1/4 in retention mechanism here we have a
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box which if I can figure out how to
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remove it that would be great there we are so that's probably
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going to contain some accessories here we've got all of our front panel
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connectors so I'm not going to bother taking those out but I think you guys
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get the point there is one thing I do want to see though here ah yes it looks
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like we're still doing usb3 via the uh
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non-he header approach so you're going to have to take your usb3 cables run
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them out the back of the case maybe through a PCI bracket and plug them into
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the back of your motherboard everything else in here the uh front fire wire the
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front audio the front USB is all pretty standard and you can see the colors of
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the cables here front e sat is right there okay so then moving down here are
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our little uh two front SATA Bays okay
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so those are going to be running off a little back plane here there's your power there's your two SATA interfaces
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so I'm going to actually show you guys really quick how that works once I
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figure it out oh there that's how it works so you
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can either Mount You've Got 2 and 1/2 in mounting holes or 3 and 1/2 in mounting
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holes on there and it looks like this Bay also functions in much the same
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manner I want you to hear if you can get in there and you can see that's what
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that little circuit board connects to so I'm going to go ahead and throw these
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back in so remember that's in addition to the
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tooless drive Bays that are located down
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here so we're going to work our way down here closer to the bottom of the case so
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you got those two plus these five now these look flimsy I'll be the first to
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tell you guys that actually it looks less flimsy when you got in here look at
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this they look flimsy as soon as you put a hard drive in here these things
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stiffen right up and once you put it back in with the hard drive you have
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utter confidence that it's not going anywhere you can see this one also comes
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with a 2 and 1/2 in adapter so natively this case can support up to two 2 and
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1/2 in drives here and an additional one with the adapter included with your top
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Drive sled so that's pretty nice to see all right moving closer to the back of
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the case actually here let's have a look up into the top so that's where our 200
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mm fan goes you can see we've got one installed and then one more optional one
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over on the other side there see so you can throw another one in there okay
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here's that little duct thing that was on the outside of the box so I guess the
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theory is that when you have a graphics card installed and I happen to have a
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graphics card handy here
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this H well that that won't necessarily work
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very well if your graphics card is installed on the very top
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of your motherboard so yeah let's not worry too much about that but I think
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the point of that duct is basically to direct as much air flow as possible at
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the graphics cards from this front fan so you intake from the front fan there's
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actually another 120 mm fan built into
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that duct and that's going to blow air directly at your graphics cards here is
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the little cable cover so you install your power supply and you can point your
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power supply with the fan drawing air up from the bottom because this is mesh
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down here so it's not going to suffocate okay and then you've got a little cover
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here so you can route cables up here you can route cables out behind the
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motherboard tray you can route cables out over here and it's going to cover up
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that that little messy portion like this
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that comes right out of your power supply directly so you won't be able to
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see that and you know what I think that actually pretty much covers everything I
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have to say about the half X Invidia Edition there's that 140 m millim fan at
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the back and then other than that we got rubber feet on the bottom and I think
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that's it thank you for checking out my unboxing of the half X Nidia Edition
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don't forget to subscribe to lus Tech tips for more unboxings reviews and other computer
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videos yeah I forgot to show you what's in this box so we've got all of our
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mounting hardware for motherboard drives and other things we've got an adapter to
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turn those two front USB 3s into
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internally header driven USB 2os we've
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got some uh zip ties okay we've got an 8 Pin extension cable
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so if your power supply doesn't have a long enough 8 pin connector which Cooler
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Master has pretty much anticipated it won't they've included an adapter for
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you okay we've also got uh
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this oh yeah I remember what this is so this goes here somewhere and then is
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used to support your graphics cards yeah that's it okay and then we also have
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some included casters so you can install those on the bottom of the case and then
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you can roll it around cuz like I said it's pretty fraking heavy even without
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hardware install there we go now we're actually done