NZXT H230 Quiet Value Case Unboxing & Overview
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,468 words · ~7 min read
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Giveaway for a chance to win great prizes. Visit intelgamingromo.com to
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learn more. Welcome to my much requested
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unboxing and overview of the NZXT H230.
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This is a quiet optimized case from H
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from H230 called the H230 from NZXT and
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it is the followup to their H2
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something like that is what it was called. Anyway, the point is it's more
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better and more optimized and just
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generally changed. So, let's go ahead and get her
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out of the case. Now you can see they are using a hard foam which
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makes sense given the more value optimized price point of this particular
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case compared to some of the more high-end stuff that they've done in the
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past. And I can't get this box open because of ah yes
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my enemy and yet my friend punch through
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handles. Never quite sure what to think of them.
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Ah I got zapped. Knew that was coming too. I could feel the static, feel the
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burn, feel the burn of the styrofoam
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and the other more different styrofoam. All right, so there's not as much
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padding as I would have liked to see on the corners. But the good news is that it's a fairly lightweight case, so it's
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going to be less of an issue than if it were a very heavy case. But with that
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said, even lightweight cases once you fill them up with hardware can tend to
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get quite heavy. So, if I was ordering from someone like a system integrator
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and I was ordering an H230, I might uh, you know, opt for like a heavy duty
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shipping box or something along those lines. So, it comes with plastic on the
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front which reveals a glossy front panel that
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you can see is probably about reflective enough for me to catch B-roll operating
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the camera there. I'm sure you can see that. Uh, not too bad. But overall, a
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very clean aesthetic. So, on the right we find not a whole lot. On the left we
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find not a whole lot. And on the top we find not a whole lot except for IO. It
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actually kind of reminds me of like Antex's old Sonata concept where it's
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got like what they were calling at the time piano black finish and then just a
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very very clean overall aesthetic. So let's go ahead and open up this front
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door here and have a look at what's inside. So no noise dampening material.
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Again this is a more value budget conscious case as uh you know us you
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know folks who don't like to use the word cheap might say. So, there's three
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five and a quarter inch bays as well as a fan filter here that uh actually looks
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like it's uh not removable. You're going to want to pull off the entire front
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piece in order to gain access to that
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cleanable filter. So, then all you have to do is pop these off, however those
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work. And then you can Yeah, there we go. There we go. So, it pops off like
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that. Let's just pull it off that way. All right. which reveals the single 120
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mm quiet fan in the front as well as another spot for an additional 120 mm
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fan. On the top of the case, we find our IO. So, there's your power switch, which
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has an integrated LED, microphone, headphone, USB 3, as well as a reset
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switch. Then, on the back of the case, we find not a whole lot to write home
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about. a 120 mm fan IO, seven PCI slots,
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additional ventilation, and a bottom-mounted power supply. So, I'm
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going to go ahead and throw this back on. We're going to open it up. We'll be back in a moment. One thing NZXT is good
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about is typically their cases, the thumb screws, aren't over torqued at the
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factory, so you're able to get them off with your hands, which is kind of nice. We open it up to find noise dampening
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foam. So, the front relies simply on
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layers of material in order to block noise from reaching the user, whereas
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the side panels do use a uh like a soft
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foam that's glued to the inside of both side panels, the right and the left. So,
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we're going to go ahead and pull both of those off. There you go. You can see more noise dampening foam over there.
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And that leads us to the interior where we don't really find too much that's
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that different. Although on a budget oriented case, haha, see, I'm avoiding
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that word again. Uh, it's nice to see this removable hard drive cage. So, you
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can install pretty much whatever graphics card you could possibly want.
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And those front intake fans, so if you were to put a very high-end graphics
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card in here, I'd probably throw another fan in that top slot. They're not going
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to be starved because they're going to draw air in from these vents that are positioned on the right and on the well
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on the one side anyway. So, there you go. Uh, it accepts six 3 and 1/2 in or 2
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and 1/2 in drives and it's got hard drive sleds that are actually accessible
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from the backside on this particular case. This is something NZXTS has
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started doing recently. So, you can see the 3 and 1/2 in drive mechanism is
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toolless whereas the 2 and 1/2 in drives get screwed into the plastic retention
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sleds. There we go. So, those clip in just like that. On the back, we find all
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of our cable management room. So you can see that what they've done is they've
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actually punched out the space near the power supply and along the path of the
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24 pin to provide just enough room for a 24 pin cable here. Whereas on the bulk
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of the back of the motherboard tray, we see things like reinforcements punched
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into it as well as lots of little hooks.
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This is another thing NZXT is great for is lots of little cable management hooks
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all over the freaking place. like they are just like all over the back of this
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motherboard tray. It's great because it allows you to keep your cables flat and
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get your side panel on without it like warping out away from it. And there's
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not a whole ton of room back here for cable management. So, I do like to see
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that. Um, very large CPU cutout, so
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you're going to be able to swap your CPU cooler regardless of whether you feel like taking your motherboard out or not.
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And the interior cables, even though it's not a windowed case, I still like
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to see this, happen to be black. So, there's your front USB 3. There's your
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front HD audio as well as your front panel connectors. And finally, a Molex
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connector. And I will have to figure out what the devil that is for. My guess
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would be a fan controller, but I didn't see one. Just a moment. And the last
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thing here is a four pin Molex connector or three pin fan connector. So, that's
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for that front fan. Other than that, we've got full toolless for the 5 and
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1/4 in base. That's internal toolless as well as a toolless mechanism for
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actually removing the things here. So, you just pull on these little clips and you can pull them out. Just a little
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something like you could drop them inside the case could also do that. And
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then last but not least, we've got a removable filter down here in the
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bottom. So, that's going to keep that air coming into your power supply
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filtered. And these feet are going to keep the case up off the floor enough
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that it's not going to suffocate even if you put it on a carpeted surface, which
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I've actually had happen with a computer before. That was uh that was very
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unfortunate. Thank you for checking out this unboxing and overview of the NZXT
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H230. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews,
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