NZXT H230 Case Review

A Look Inside
When taking a look inside the chassis the first part worth mentioning is the fact that it includes sound dampening foam but the foam is not particularly very sizable and not super dense like we have seen before so that is something we will assess further in the installation and final thoughts section after we test it out with a system installed. Internally you see that being a budget case there are some concessions made such as non grommeted cable routing holes.

The tool-less drive management for the 5.25″ bays is a quite simple flip out locking connector, which to open you simply press up on the button area and pull the bar outward to release, and once the drive is installed or lined up you can press it inward to lock in place. The HDD cages offer 3 drive mounts per cage with two cages. The top HDD cage is removable if needed in the case that you have a super long video card and need the extra room to fit. The drive trays actually remove from the back end so lets flip around and take a look at those.

The drive trays when removed you can see have the outer edge mounting for 3.5″ drives covered with metal peg mounts which snap into the normal mounting screw holes. SSD or other 2.5″ drive mounting is direct center on the tray and would require mounting screws to be used for the drive mounting, but after mounted to the tray the tray still simply slides into place in the cage for a quick install. One thing worth noting here is that while the drive trays do work well they feel very flimsy so be careful when building with them as when flexing them to fit the 3.5″ drives they do feel like they could break and that would really put a damper on your new build experience. As you can see there are a few thumbscrews on the back side of the top HDD cage and these have to be removed for the cage to be removed should you need that space for a longer graphics card or possibly even some water cooling equipment.

 The rear fan included with the H230 is a 120mm model just like the front and if needed there is mounting capability for a 92mm should you find the need to replace the rear fan with a smaller unit but why anyone would do this is a bit unclear to me. The PCI Expansion slots come in at 7 which means you could run a nice 3 Way card setup but being a much more budget oriented case most users will likely use 1 or two graphics cards in this chassis ideally.

Taking a look at the lower area you can see the standard PSU mounting which has the room for a larger unit should you need it but also in front of the PSU mounting there is room for a bottom mounted 120mm fan which is also kept tide internally with a removable bottom dust filter. Peering inside one last time before the install I do think the large CPU backplate cutout can be a major help when installing higher end coolers where removing the board just to install or even worse installing the board with the cooler installed is simply not ideal this will help alot.

The rear side of the H230 has a lot to love and also some areas that concern me a bit. Knowing this is a budget case I dont want to hit it too hard for some of these but the amount of cable management room is quite tight for any larger amount of cabling and with boutique systems now showing off even more with uni sleeved cables the problem grows exponentially. The top mounted cable hole for routing the 8 pin EPS connector is well placed and should be well suited to effectively manage the cable in that top corner.