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Date: September 22nd, 2009
Article by: Joe Anderson (Hardware Reviewer)
Edited By: Nathan Glentworth (Owner / Head Editor)
Product was submitted by: NZXT
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PRODUCT PICTORIAL AND WALKTHROUGH

The front panel cables are generous in length (with the exception of the audio cable, which may be too short for some ‘board layouts,) and the connectors are clearly marked. Both HD Audio and AC ‘97 formats are supported with gang plugs and the AC ‘97 also gets individual connectors. While this feature may be desirable by a few users, there will be quite a tangle of wires around the audio connector.

Well, that about does it for the walkaround. Let's get some hardware installed and see how the Zero 2 does in the performance arena.

 

 

 

 

 

PRODUCT INSTALLATION AND TESTING

For this review, Mr. Bones and I have chosen the following components:

• MSI DKA790GX Platinum motherboard

• AMD Phenom 9950 BLACK EDITION Agena 2.6GHz (@ 3.0 GHz) 140W CPU OEM cooler

• Hiper Type R MKII 680W PSU

• OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) OCZ2F10662GK RAM

• EVGA 8800 GTS 640MB graphics card OEM cooler

• Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320 GB hard drive

• Samsung SH-S203N DVD writer

Mr. Bones, while being very vain and shallow, has unimpeachable integrity and will be overseeing testing. To get baseline temperature data, I used OCCT (Ver. 3.0.1) to stress the CPU and GPU in the open air setup pictured above. Tests were run for 1 hour and highest temps at idle and load recorded from the graphs generated by the program. We'll compare these temps to the temps in the case after installation. Let's proceed with the installation.

Job one is to remove the front bezel. This is accomplished by grasping the bezel from the bottom cutout and pulling it away from the chassis. After removing the plastic bay covers and corresponding block off plates, the drives can be installed via the drive rails and the bezel reinstalled. A fan filter for the front 120mm intake fan is held in place by four screws and can be removed for cleaning. This filter will restrict intake airflow, compounding the cooling issue I foresee with the Zero 2.

Like the original Zero, drive rails snap onto the devices and slide effortlessly into place. The drives are very secure with this setup and adding/replacing drives is, literally, a snap.

 

<--CLICK FOR PRICES ON A NZXT ZERO 2 COMPUTER CASE IN AMERICA
<--CLICK FOR PRICES ON A NZXT ZERO 2 COMPUTER CASE IN CANADA