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Published in Reviews

NZXT Tempest gaming case dissected

by on04 September 2008

Index



The Tempest packs a lot of space and it’s nicely designed and planned out. The airflow is just great, which is the reason why it’s called “The Airflow King”. Of course, its 6 fans are greatly responsible for that.

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Inside you’ll find a bag containing mounting instructions, various screws, a couple of 5 ¼” cases and a couple of more things.

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The front two fans have a job of cooling the disks. Their filters are easily removed for cleaning.

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A great thing about this case is that you can put up to 8 hard disks, but note that they’ll have to be lying on their sides.

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Mounting hard disks and optical drives is quite straightforward. If you’re not a pro, there’s always the manual, but we mounted the hard disk and DVD writer with no trouble whatsoever.

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Although IDE disks are slowly becoming a thing of the past, they’re still quite mainstream so we used it for our today’s test. Luckily our DVD device is SATA so we didn’t have any conflicts, as we had only one IDE cable. We tried using just one cable to connect the DVD and hard disk, but we couldn’t pull that off.

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There are two 5 ¼” optical drive bays and one for the floppy drive. As we already said before, floppy drive can be easily removed in order to gain another 5 ¼” slot.

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Mounting mechanisms are quite simple so removing and installing optical drives will be a breeze.

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There’s no definite rule whether you should install the motherboard or the PSU first, but we opted on the latter option. In order to mount a fan such as Cooler Master Hyper 212 you’ll have to take the motherboard out, as the cooler, due to its weight, requires a back-plate to be mounted on the motherboard. This was not a problem as there’s plenty of space in the case.

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For our testing we used ASUS extreme Maximus motherboard, EVGA Geforce 8800 GTS graphics card, OCZ 700W PSU and a large Cooler Master cooler for the CPU.

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All this fit in this case with no trouble whatsoever, and there was still plenty of space to provide a great airflow. We think that one passive graphics card would definitely fit great here, as the case cooling would be more than enough to keep its temperatures in check. You can arrange the cables nicely if you route them behind the metal panel holding the motherboard, and NZXT apparently planned this out.

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Conclusion

Tempest “Airflow King” is a great case with a lot of space and a great cooling system. With a total of 6 fans on this case (NZXT here beats some much pricier manufacturers) this case will appeal to most demanding of users. Apart from the fact that it packs 6 fans, this case is incredibly quiet. In our case, the loudest component was our old hard disk. Mounting hard and optical drives with no need for tools is certainly a big plus, but being priced at €100 is an even bigger one.

It features two hard disk bays, each capable of housing 4 disks. Most high-end cases don’t have space for 8 disks, so Tempest is definitely worth it.

A small problem we noticed is that USB ports on the upper panel are too close to each other, and we couldn’t use our two Corsair Voyager sticks. Also, to remove the front panel you’ll have to pull on it, and there’s a realistic chance that it’ll break if you pull too hard. The right panel has to be removed in order to arrange the cables underneath the motherboard, but those screws, unlike the ones on the left panel, have to be removed by using the screwdriver.

All in all, the price/quality ratio is really good and if you’re looking for a case we sincerely recommend this steel giant.

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Last modified on 04 September 2008
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