NZXT H440 Quiet PC Case
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
2,704 words · ~13 min read
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the h440 from NZXT comes packed pretty unexceptionally yours will of course
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have a picture on the side of the box but other than that you got some styrofoam unexceptional styrofoam would
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have liked to see better styrofoam but this is the usual rig moral let's move
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on to the case itself the h440 is a quiet optimized case they're going for a
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clean classy overall aesthetic and actually considering the price very very
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solid build quality so we'll start at the front of the case where you've got
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well okay you've got a clean aesthetic so you've got kind of a little pattern
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here that we've seen on H series cases before and other than that you've got a
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completely blank front with a tiny little NZXT logo down at the very very
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bottom when you move over to the right hand side panel you find ah yes more
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blank more empty just one little black accent line you've also got access to
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some of the vents for the front now this case is not as airf flow optimized as I
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would like even for a silent case all you've got on the front are these vents
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right here some access from the bottom to fresh air and then all you've got on
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the top are a couple of vents I think it
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was at the back yeah there's a there's some ventilation at the back and then
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there's some ventilation on the left hand side and that is pretty much it
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when you consider that there's up to two 140 mm or three 120 MIM fans in each of
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these locations it really doesn't feel like enough to me but that's not to say
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that your system is going to overheat it's just that those fans will be a
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little bit on the starved side so let's move around to the left hand side where you can see the ventilation I was
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talking about before an extremely nice looking side panel window I mean look at
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that you can't see the power supply this is something we've been seeing as an
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aftermarket mod for quite some time encasing the power supply and something
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really clean and Sleek looking you've also got an illuminated ncxt logo that
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you actually don't have to leave lit up if you don't want to there is a switch
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on the back that allows you to turn that on and off this also has the added sort
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of value ad here of there you go Illuminating the rear eyeo almost the
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entire back of the case can be lit up so you can see what you're doing in the
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dark and uh you can also have sort of like a neat rear glow sort of effect of
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your system if you want okay also on the back we've got a 120 mm or 140 mm fan
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Mount and this is something NZXT has been doing for a while with their
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slidable fan Mount so you can have the fan up a little bit higher a little bit
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lower this will help you not interfere with other components such as tall vrm
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heat sinks on a motherboard you can also see that it's seven PCI slots you've got
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those stupid grommets that I have no idea why anyone keeps including and then
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finally your power supply at the bottom you've also got those vents that I was
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talking about in the back and that pretty much wraps things up for the outside except for the top IO so it has
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two USB 2.0 ports two USB 3.0 ports headphone and a microphone jacks as well
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as a power switch and a reset switch now let's open her up and find out where the
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magic truly is well one thing that's magical is the fact that in almost as
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many places as they could NZXT has gone
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and included these little retainers for their thumb screws so that when you take
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the screw out of the side panel or when you unscrew it it doesn't fall out and
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you don't lose it the next thing that's magical is this is feels like actual
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neoprene on the inside so they seem to be using a very very dense foam for the
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sound dampening material on the inside of the case it is a little bit bulkier
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than the bitman for example that fractal design uses but it has a very nice
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quality feel to it it's a little bit spongy um and I obviously I'd need an
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anaco chamber or something if I was going to test the actual efficacy of it
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but um it at least looks and feels good Cable Management looks exceptional right
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so you've got this bottom compartment where it's hiding the power supply and
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all the power supply cables even though it's a modular power supply there are quite a few cables plugged in as you
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guys would be able to see if I could show you that so it's nice to have that
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hidden away there's two 2 and a half in SSD mounts down here that are handled by
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a single thumb screw then you actually screw the drive onto the sled slide it
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back and they've got cable management holes specifically for those and for any
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bottom cables that you want to Route such as the uh front IO or your USB 2 or
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your front panel audio all that kind of good stuff on this side we've got
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another thing that we've seen as an aftermarket mod quite a few times in the
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last couple of years and this is a a stealth cover for all the where normally
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you'd have 5 and a/4 in Bays I wish that they had made this a little bit
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stealthier uh they could have done it fairly easily by just putting another
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panel here but that would have added additional cost so it's the kind of
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thing that you could easily put on as an aftermarket option but there you have it
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at any rate that's there so instead of having any 5 and a/ qu inch Bay this
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case is all 3 and 1 half inch Bays here in the front which I'll show you from
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the back in a moment or radiator mounting options and then you've got
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your two SSD cages right here so let's contrast what the front looks like you
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got your cable management grommets right here and you know all your drives hidden
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away behind a stealth cover and ah yes the back of the case so the thing about
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that thick foam you can see that there's a lot of indentations here in it from
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when I slid it onto the case the thing about that thick foam is that it takes
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up a lot of space behind the motherboard tray that you would normally be able to
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use for cable management so even though
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I like I thought that I had a ton of space back here because it looks like
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well over a centimeter of space at every stage and then it actually widens back
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here where the 24 pin needs to come down I really didn't have that much space and
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you're going to need to make use of all the Ting bajillion little Cable
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Management hooks that exist on the back of the motherboard trade the good news is that you have them so I was able to
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tidy things up enough fairly easily just with a couple of uh twist ties that I
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was able to close the thing up without any difficulty also here on the back of
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the case we have an 11 Port fan power
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splitter this is awesome love to see that I wish that it was also fan control
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even if it was just something like a switch that I had to reach into the inside to do I mean I guess what you
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could do is you could probably mod it and it's just a simple Molex power input
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so you could mod it and change the power in to 7vt or something like that but
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either way this thing is absolutely awesome so it's got one one intake or
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one input on fan one I believe it is and then you can have 10 fans come off of it
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so so sorry 10 10 fan power splitter um
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the only thing I don't like about it is that if you add any other fans so the 31
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20 mm fans that are included in the front are reasonably quiet the 1 140 mm
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fan in the back is reasonably quiet but
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any fans that you add will be running at full speed if you run them off this so
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it would have been nice to see them able to be controlled now something I didn't do when I was actually building the
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system and I just realize now is take off the front panel the panel both the
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front and the top are quite a bit heavier than they actually appear due to
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the metal construction and as well as the neoprene foam so that gives you
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access to the magnetic fan filter as well as the 3 120 mm fans in the front
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so you can do up to two triple radiators in this thing natively without any
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difficulty or you can opt instead for dual 140 mm or 280 mm radiators up here
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we've got the little control the little power module for the built-in logo
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illumination as well as the IED and all that good stuff and then other than that
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it's pretty bog standard back here except well for these hard drive cages
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so ncxt has gotten away from the whole plastic hard drive tray thing
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unfortunately theyve only included five of them so natively the case only
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accepts seven or eight 2 and 1/2 in drives cuz there's one more Mount hiding
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down here in the bottom or three 2 and 1/2 in drives and five 3 and 1/2 in
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drives in these trays they have permanently attached the little rubber
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grommets to them for noise and vibration isolation and there's actually one other
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thing I didn't really like about them and that's the fact that when you slide
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them in there's no real rails for them to sit on the entire time like they're
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just free until you slide them all the way in and then they hook onto the other
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side so there's two thumb screws at the back of each one you loosen that and
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then once you pull it out these are great again these thumb screws don't come out on their own so they'll they'll
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actually stay in there so once you pull it out it just swings freely until you
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pop it into the little spot on the other side of that uh that stealth cover over
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there so I love to see a return to Quality with metal Drive cages instead
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of plastic ones but I wouldn't have minded seeing a little bit more of a of
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of a solid support for it now I understand why they did these two things
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so less support as well as fewer Drive
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cages does give you more ventilation so that front those front fans at least if
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they're going to be choked by the front panel they might as well not be choked
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by the uh the hard drive cages behind them so I can see their point in doing
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this it's just not necessarily something that I 100% agree with inside this
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little NZXT box of accessories we find all of the screws that we will need as
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well as a little NZXT sticker nothing truly exceptional in there oh yeah nice
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big CPU uh cutout so you're going to be able to access your CPU socket pretty
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much no matter what and then I did have one other complaint about the case
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although this is a fairly minor thing so I've got an ax1200i in here and the
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modular interface is pretty hard to get at because you can't actually it seems
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remove oh no wait uh no yeah it's riveted in so you can't actually remove
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that stealth cover on the front of the case it's a little bit hard to get at
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your modular interface in here especially once you have a bunch of cables plugged in but this is a minor
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complaint because it's the kind of thing that you really won't have to deal with
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all that often so all the io and all the cables are attached to the top of the
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case here there you go very very simple very very clean so the way that you um
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that you sort of get at the top is to just pop this off and then there's no
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wires attached to it or anything like that it's extremely Hefty extremely
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solid feeling and then the only ventilation is uh here along this side
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and here along the back and it's got more of that neoprene feeling foam on it
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you can also see now the h100i that I have installed there you go so we've got
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two 120 mm fans and you can actually slide them around depending on exactly
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where you want to position them and then you can put a third one here although it should be noted that if you do install a
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third fan and radiator here you won't be able to mount the radiator uh this way
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around so you can see I have the tubing coming down on this side because that'll
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interfere with the top hard drive cage so that'll limit you instead to four
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hard drives Four 3 and 1/2 in drives instead of uh 5 3 and 1/2 in drives
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although if I was using this case I'd probably be going for like an ultimate
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liquid cooling quiet machine or something like that so I'd get some nice
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high static pressure fans like n2s I'd
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get two triple radiators I'd run them at extremely low RPM and then I'd be able
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to basically overclock the snot out of the system inside in spite of the fact
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that it's extremely silent you would be limiting your expansion options in terms
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of storage though because you'd pretty much be stuck with these two SSD mounts
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and then the SSD mount in the bottom the good news about that though is that
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there's nothing um limiting the height of these drives and Western Digital has
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I believe a 2 tbte 2 and 1/2 inch drive that's a non-standard thickness it's 15
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mm or 17 mm thick so that gives you some great options in terms of both SSD and
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um mechanical Drive expansion even if you're stuck with a 2 and 1 12 in form
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factor I think that pretty much wraps it up guys thank you for checking out my
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unboxing and I guess it's a review of the h440 from NZXT don't forget to like
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