I graduated from High School nearly nine years ago. Everyone has heard those “things were different in my day” stories from their parents and grand-parents. But in a little hick town in Tennessee with a population under 5,000 people, things really were different. Everyone I knew carried a knife to school; it was a requirement for some of the classes, believe it or not. I don’t think I ever had a class that had more than 25 other students in it. And the faculty, well, let’s not get into them right now. Let’s just say that one of them actually did not condone enunciation in her classroom, she said it took too long to say what you wanted to say. But the point is, black wasn’t popular then either. No, not that kind of black, I mean black clothing. Once again, that’s another story altogether.
And now, everyone and their mother are wearing black. It’s a fashion trend now. I still wear it all the time, and rarely wear anything else, but not because half the people on television claim to be dark and mysterious. I simply still don’t give a crap and have a horrible attitude most of the time. But I have a feeling that NZXT targets me sometimes when it comes to their gaming cases.
They go flat black (what we called “murdered out”) and they make them look absolutely awesome. Take the case I’m reviewing today for example, the Gamma steel mid tower. It’s sleek, roomy, and has space for six 120mm fans. I tell you, it’s awesome, it’s black, and it doesn’t care what you think.
Let’s get right down to the technical specs of this beauty:
- FORM FACTORS: ATX, Micro ATX
- DRIVE BAYS: 4 External 5.25” bays, 6 internal 3.5” bays, 7 expansion slots.
- COOLING FAN OPTIONS: 1x120mm front fan, 1x120mm rear fan, 2×120/140mm side fans, and 2×120/140mm top fans. Rear fan included.
- CHASSIS DIMENSIONS: (D x W x H): 508 x 190 x 440
- CHASSIS MATERIAL: Steel
- CHASSIS WEIGHT: 6 kg
Next we take a look at what this case has to offer…
It’s pretty light for a steel case. I wouldn’t recommend trying to juggle three of them, but it’s not a heavy case. The front bezel is made of hard molded plastic with built-in ports for USB 2.0, Audio, and eSATA. The bay guards are made from the classic NZXT honeycomb mesh.
The rear slot covers are also made from the black mesh. 1” feet keep the case off the surface it sits on, which is a good thing since the PSU is meant to be mounted in the bottom of the case. Restrict air flow to your PSU and see how far you get, suckers.
I really like that they moved the power supply dock to the bottom, as the weight of one of these can be a PC killer during install. Anyone who has ever let a PSU slip while installing it and had it break off their graphic card at the hilt knows what I mean here. Another huge factor is that this case was designed to accept larger than 10” video cards. This is a big plus for the gamers who use high-end graphics cards.
Above the rear fan are two rubber-coated holes for water cooling tubes. Also a very handy feature to have. Remember when we had to drill those holes ourselves and try not to cut the tubing on the sharp metal edges? Ugh.
Once the side of the case is off, you can see the real living space. There’s tons of room for anything and everything you desire to shove inside your build. There’s enough room in here for a four optical drives, six hard drives, a massive heatsink, and still plenty of breathing room.
The big thing is that most people who custom build worry about heat. It’s a PC’s worst enemy, even above water. But with enough room to stick pretty much whatever cooling device you want in there and the comfort of six huge fans circulating air, I think heat won’t be a concern here.
I collected five 120mm fans that I had lying around and rigged the whole thing up. Running on a 12 volt power supply in sequence, the amount of airflow through the empty case was great. But with no obstructions, what’s to stop it anyway? So I shoved a power supply, mother board, hdd, the whole nine yards.
The two side fans are designed to directly hit the CPU and GPU for optimum performance. Especially handy if you like to overclock your video card or processor. I don’t think heat would be an issue at all with this case and a couple of good heatsinks.
I was a little disappointed that it didn’t come with a firewire port on the front. I like to edit video, and firewire is my preferred port for transferring from my digital video camera. But they made up for that with the drive locks. I love those things. I get nervous any time I have to take a screwdriver near my hardware.
Inside a box nestled in the 3.5” bays are an assortment of thumbscrews for your drives, plastic drive locks if you prefer sliding your drives into place rather than screwing them there, and some old school screws for the purists.
There’s also a baggie of motherboard stand-outs just in case you don’t have any on hand. How nice of them. They could have given us the case and said “you’re on your own”, but they were kind. Okay, enough of my crap. Time for the conclusion.
As I said, the limited ports on the front of the case kind of disappointed me. I am a firewire fan, and I like having easy access. This is fixed with a simple bay add-on, but I can still complain. That’s my job. The amount of space for optical drives is pretty standard, but by no means slighted by its normality. If you need more than four optical drive slots and you aren’t doing something illegal or working for the government, there’s something wrong.
I love the fact that the official floppy access is gone; hopefully this is a staying trend. Death to floppies. The ability to set up six drives on a raid or three drives with HDD coolers is pretty sweet, allowing a range of possibilities on how much storage you can have with or without extra cooling. The built in water cooling tube access is a nice touch, a true sign that NZXT looks out for their gamer brethren.
Overall, the sleek look and sharp edges make this a great case for any medium custom build. Murdered out with attitude.
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1 Comment
"I love the fact that the official floppy access is gone hopefully this is a staying trend. Death to floppies."
Memory card readers also use the 3.5" external bay.