NZXT H2 Black Silent Computer Case Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
2,821 words · ~14 min read
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the H2 from NZXT is available in a couple of different colors today we are
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going to be on actually I don't know which one's inside here so I guess we'll
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oh oh here we go on the side yes we are going to be unboxing the Black Version
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but it is available in black and white so why don't we have a look at the
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overall specs for this case right off the bat so it has three 5 and 1/4 in
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external Bay eight 3 and 1/2 in internal Bay seven expansion slots it includes 2
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12 mm cooling fans one at the front one
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at the back it also supports a 140 in the top and a 120 at the bottom VGA
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support is up to just over 12 in without the hard drives and 270 mm with a hard
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drives would that be about 11 in 10 and 1/2 something along those lines okay
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wiring space that's a good that's a good spec to have because basically NZXT has
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taken into consideration how much wiring space you might need at the back of the
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chassis and put in Lots so that you will be able to run all of your cables to
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actually use the the cable management features that they have built in It's
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Made of plastic with aluminum plastic SL aluminum uh yes with aluminum finishing
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uh material is steel of black coating total weight you probably don't care too
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much ooh USB 3 exciting all right what do we got here touch powered fans these
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are neat I'll show you that later okay 30 w three three-step fan control this
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is a big thing that I love about NZXT chassis they built in they build in
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these fan controllers so you got 40% 70%
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and 100% fan speed controller
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uh 30 wat three step I'm not sure how many fans it supports but we'll find
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that out shortly top hot swap capable SATA hard drive dock which is we've seen
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this before but what we haven't seen before is a stealth one so we'll show
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you that in a minute as well uh eight front facing hard drives for optimal airflow noise dampening foam and top
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magnetic fan cover for minimal PC noise okay we'll show you that as well and
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finally ample 25 space behind the motherboard tray for cable management
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what else we got on the outside that's it that's all it's a very plain box
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which is fun I would rather see companies spending
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well because I work at an etailer we don't really have um as many retail
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stores as we sell stuff online NZXT is a
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great online shopping experience and for an online shopping experience you do not
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need a fancy retail box so I would much rather see a higher quality product or
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better packing or whatever else than uh
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than a fancy shiny retail box which I mean you know what an an expensive box
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like a really nice retail box can cost you you know in the neighborhood of five
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bucks so you know don't underestimate how much it costs to add that to a
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product all right we got foam packing
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material you can see we've got about an inch of packing material on all sides so
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that should keep it nice and safe this is not my favorite kind of packing material because it is the uh the
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breakable stuff so it'll only really take it's kind of like a helmet it'll
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only really take an impact once or twice and then you should pretty much replace
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it unlike the soft closed cell phones
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but it is definitely acceptable to get a chassis this size
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from its source to its destination in
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one piece which we will verify in a moment because this one has clearly
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traveled from some kind of
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uh origin to some kind of a destination
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which is me and there it is the too so
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why don't we start with the Aesthetics in our outside unboxing today so at the
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front we see a very plain very slick
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looking extern exterior okay we've got a
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chrome finish around the outside plastic bezel around the very very outside and
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then a brushed aluminum finish here you can see it's got a small accent that
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breaks up the squareness of the front down here where it dips into a little
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corner okay we're going to just just go ahead and open that up so it looks like
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Yep this is magnetized I really like that because latches break magnets
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pretty much don't they they just kind of work on the inside you can see the
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magnets here you can see the screws that uh make up the construction of the front
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panel very nice you can also see the foam that is part of the noise dampening
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features of this chassis you can see the tooless 3 and 1/2 uh 5 and 1/4 in Bay
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covers which can be removed and put in just like that just pull on that there
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and you can see it's already open okay
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next you can who if you don't drop it inside and ruin
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everything ruined okay there we go you can also see this as a cool feature so
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these fans if the case was powered on would obviously be on check this out so
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NZXT has done away with the concept of
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running fan wires around your chassis by building in power here so you actually
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plug power into what is essentially like a fan back plane you can plug any fan
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you want in and then all you do is slide it into place and it'll start spinning
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so if there's no power which is caused by disconnecting it here and losing the
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contact at these PowerPoints here so you can see you can plug in any fan as long
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as you uh shorten the cable enough to plug into here and then you just go like
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this and boom it's on just like that
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really cool feature so the other front 120 mm fan does that as well we can take
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these out and then once we've removed these we actually have access to install
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up to eight 3 and 1/2 in hard drives or
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2 and 1/2 in ssds or well hard drives if you really want to but I don't really
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see the point um so you can see here these are toolis as well so you just pop
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these back a little bit install your drive and slide it in 2 and 1/2 in
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drives are mounted via the uh holes on
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the bottom of the drive so just like that feels pretty solid overall as soon
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as you put a drive in a mechanism like this it's going to gain a lot more
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rigidity so so that is something to bear in mind now the 2 and 1/2 in drives
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won't help with the rigidity Factor but they're also not heavy so you're not
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going to have to worry about them flying around inside your case you got a little
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foot here which has their NZXT branding on it very Tastefully finished as well
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in kind of a gunmetal gray all right I think that's pretty much it for the
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front of the case let's move up to the top cuz that's where some of the other
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interesting stuff is here's our power switch here's our reset switch here is
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our fan speed controller which is a switch style fan speed
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controller we have front headphones front microphone one front USB 3.0 or
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you can probably wire it up as 2.0 as well if you feel like it three front USB
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2.0 so a total of four front USB in here you find that hot swappable
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bake so all you have to do is put in a 3 and 1/2 in or 2 and 1/2 in drive you go
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ahead and stealth that back up and it doesn't disrupt the look of your case
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like I said we've seen this feature in the past but we haven't seen it implemented in a
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way that doesn't seriously detract from the appearance of the top of the chassis
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so just going to go ahead and put that back on there and then finally we've got
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a magnetic cover for the top 140 mm fan
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should you choose to install it so you just go like that and position it where
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it goes which I don't remember where it goes I guess it goes right about there
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and there's actually yeah okay you've got a little bit of clearance in the
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back here some I'm just going to go ahead and tip the chassis towards the
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cameraman so he can see it so you can
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stealth the fan and you can have like it's going to be quite a restricted
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exhaust or you can take it off and you can leave it open which also looks
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fairly slick so let's go ahead and put that back on for
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now it's a little bit clumsy to position but since you probably won't be doing it
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very often I wouldn't worry too much there you go now it's in the right spot
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about that so the side p panels we're just going to show you very briefly very
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plain very black you've got the one small accent here where you've got that
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gunmetal gray piece along the bottom so it kind of makes the chassis look like
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it has a bit of a foot which is kind of nice on the other side same thing okay
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so this is a silence optimized chassis it's not about necessarily putting dual
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GTX 590s in it so you don't have any side panel um intake fans for video
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cards which is fine because it's all about building the right thing for the
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purpose you are trying to achieve and you don't necessarily want
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to go and put a bunch of random fan holes into a chassis that's all about
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silence because you shouldn't be loading it up with 15 fans
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anyway okay let's just take off these side panels and let's have a look at the
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back so at the back you can see we've got a 120 mm fan it's a white and black
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fan which uh matches the overall look of
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the chassis itself we've got our standard IO Shield
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um is Shield cutout we have seven PCI
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expansion slots two water cooling tubing grommets should you decide to use an
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external water cooling setup some ventilation holes here as well as room
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for a standard ATX power supply this has all eight mounting holes so you can
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mount your power supply either facing with the fan down oh actually here I
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shouldn't take off the side panel just yet either with the fan facing down into
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the filtered intake or with the fan up
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if you wanted to draw in hot air from the video card so when we take the side
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panel off we find more noise dampening foam glued on quite securely for those
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of you who are wondering go ahead and throw that in
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here all right I'm just going to take off the other side panel
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here just so that we can see all of the
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internal goodies that are in this case
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all right so first thing here is accept accessories let's see what we've got
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included for mounting hardware and
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whatnot all right so we have a manual we
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have a speaker we have some black cable
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ties we also have a whole lot of mounting screws and yeah more mounting
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screws lots of mounting screws so in case you were lacking mounting screws
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now you have lots okay motherboard tray
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let's start with that we've got a cutout
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here for CPU coolers that require a back plate so you don't have to take your
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motherboard out install it and put it back in which is a real hassle you can
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just install it from the back by removing the back side panel all of the
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internal cables are black which I really like to see really nice okay so here is
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power for the front fans as well as
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power for the fan controller up at the top of the case it looks like the fan
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controller supports one hm how many does it support two
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three leads probably oh probably four there's probably run one running to the
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back fan as well let me just see where that is uh they've actually here this is
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kind of the neat uh come around to the back I think it supports four but um
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here come to the back okay so you can see that they've actually cable tied all
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of the wiring in place for you right off the bat so we support
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one 2 3 4 wow looks like five fans you
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know what if anyone knows for sure post it everyone thumbs it up because I can't
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actually follow all the leads right back to the fan controller and find out where
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they're coming from necessarily okay they've also pre- managed the oh you
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know what let's look at the back while we're here so Cable Management holes are
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done via the uh rubber grommets here here and here all along the back so you
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can run the cables up from your power supply to wherever they need to go
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without being able to see them you can also see the 2 and 1/2 cm of clearance
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at the back of the uh at the back of the motherboard tray which is enough to run
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a 24 pin connector you'd be amazed how many chassis makers make that mistake so
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that you actually can't run it out here bend it because remember that's a lot
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more than just the thickness of the cable once you try and bend it and run it up to where it needs to go you've
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also got these little um hooks right here for zip ties which are very handy
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for keeping everything flat at the back and we can put screws in in addition to
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the tooless mount for our 5 and 1/4 in Bay this speaking of the 5 and 1/4 in
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Bas here's the toolless mount I've seen this one before and I'm a big fan okay
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so it locks somehow or other I can't remember yeah there we go so you put it
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out like that lock it in like that doesn't come out anymore I like it it
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just looks neat it's like a little like Caterpillar
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like okay uh we've got screw storage all
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along the side of the case here okay now there's our 35 and 1/4 in
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Bay nothing exceptional there there's the uh eight 3 and 1/2 inch base which
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we' saw before down here we have our extra 120 mm fan Mount so that's for
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more intake should you so desire we have
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support for very long power supplies you can put in pretty much whatever you want
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as well as rubber grommets here at the bottom of the case to lift it a little
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bit up so that you uh aren't going to have any restriction when you're pulling
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air in from the bottom of the case okay we've also got our front USB 3 is hooked
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up via the outside so you can see there's a hole here at the back so
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that'll plug into the back of your motherboard into it's not the most elegant solution but it's also not the
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end of the world because it took everyone forever to decide on a standard
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for internal USB 3 here's all the front cables including USB 2 another USB 2 HD
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audio as well as all your front switches and LEDs and I think that pretty much
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covers everything I wanted to say about the H2 don't forget to subscribe to lus
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