NZXT Tempest EVO Review - PAGE 3

Upon removing the side panels the first thing that my eyes were drawn to was the skeletal frame structure that makes up the lower third of the Tempest EVO. Have you ever dropped a motherboard screw or stand-off before? I have, and trying to fish those tiny parts from between the motherboard tray and the right panel is disheartening and downright maddening if the power supply has been installed already. Usually I just shake the entire case around and tilt it one way or another hoping to dislodge any wayward screws. You won't be suffering any of that with this case however! The pure freedom of movement allowed with this design is very welcome and is a prime example illustrating my earlier statement about "internal room".

This case comes with the standard accessories, mainly consisting of drive rails, spare screws, and motherboard stand-offs. There is a 5.25" to 3.5" drive-bay converter for external floppy or zip-drive access, one of which can be seen removed from the case on the right in the picture above.

The inside of this case is very spacious and open, yet retains the level of structural strength that we have come to expect in our enclosures. This plethora of room makes wire management a breeze for all cables except for the 20+4 PIN mainline. For structural integrity, the engineers at NZXT have curled the metal at the bottom of the motherboard tray. This was a wise decision in the strength department, but severely short-sighted in the wire management field. The 20+4 PIN mainline has to sit on top of this curling and as a result gets pushed out away from the case. In what I can only guess was a last minute "hot-fix", if you will, this may explain why the interesting bulge on the right side panel exists. They tried to give this thick bundle of wires as much clearance room as possible, and in this regard they partially succeeded in my opinion. Yes there is enough room to be able to close the right-side panel... but you end up having to keep the panel closed with a good deal of pressure in order to screw it in.

I also had a great deal of difficulty removing the front panel of this case. Unlike most modern cases, the plastic covering on the Tempest EVO is held in with pressure-clips that are nearly impossible to disengage. After twenty minutes of poking and prodding at all the connections trying to figure out how to remove it without breaking the thing in half out of frustration, I gave in and looked at the instruction manual that came with the case. Now, like any self-respecting geek, the first thing I had done with the instruction booklet was to toss it over my shoulder and across the room, because we never read those. After finally admitting defeat I tracked it down under the pile of packing material that had buried it. Perhaps it could help me with this dilemma.

As you can see this thing is completely indecipherable. The tiny section highlighted by the red oval is the only portion that is in English on both sides and it was completely unhelpful. Resigned to my fate: I, as gently as possible, depressed the tight plastic clips and removed the front bezel. Even though I accomplished that as carefully as possible I still broke off two of the clips on the bottom, as can be seen in the below picture.

If that wasn't enough, let me take a moment here to talk about the poor cable retention that can be found with this bezel. The wires that provide power to the front LED's and HDD indicators are mostly free-hanging, but I think that they were originally secured in with hot-glue, as evidenced by the small globs still clinging feebly to the wires in the picture above. Everyone knows that hot glue is worse than worthless when it comes to securing anything, so it will come to no great surprise that they had broken loose during shipping. Additionally the HDD indicator wire broke loose completely and came away in my hand as I began to install hardware.

Let us take a moment now to go over the hard drive mounting system and front-panel cooling configuration.

The fans used in this case are 9-bladed monsters that are nearly silent even at max RPM. These fans are branded with the NZXT label on the back, but after a bit of internet sleuthing I have determined that these are actually Rifle Bearing brush-less fans manufactured by Xinchangfeng Electronics Co., Ltd. (also known as Martech) based in China. These fans have also been used in cases such as SilverStone's Raven RV01 and Fortress models.  This picture above showing the fan is taken from the left side panel. As you can see, there is not a dust filter per-se, rather there is a tight-meshed metal screen found on this fan only. The rest of the fans are open facing.

The 5.25" to 3.5" drive bay converter that came with this case is sized such that it prevents the removal of the dust filters if it is placed too close. I guess that wasn't a concern with the engineers at NZXT, because if you look closely you can see that the bottom filter would probably be just as difficult to remove with the top filter still in place.

The dust covers slide up and out of the metal clips that secure it to the fan cage and keep it from moving around and escaping. These retention clips are seriously over engineered for their task however. They were really wide and thick and probably sturdy enough to hang the case from. Their size made removing the dust filters quite the chore because of the tight fit. It certainly didn't help that these metal retention clips had sharp edges and a little portion of the screen got caught on one as I was trying my best to extricate it from its holders. There goes the dust filtering capabilities. 

The dust covers are very thin. From the image above the filters look rather thick, but 90% of that bulk is due to the plastic frame. The actual dust filters are a very fine (thin) plastic screen much like window screening, but nowhere near as sturdy. They feel flimsy and thin. I would be wary about cleaning them in the sink with water, but compressed air should work fine as long as you don't get the stream of air too close to the mesh. I would not be surprised if it blew a hole in the screening, however.

With the dust filter removed, you can see the square mesh that ..... well, I am not sure what function this metal screen serves besides the hindering of air flow. The holes are too large to catch dust and there should not be any incoming objects that the fan needs to be protected from that the metal mesh on the front bezel wouldn't catch. The fan housing is screwed into the front of the case by four machine screws, and it comes out with little difficulty once those screws are removed. The hard drive cage is secured with a screw on either side of the case, and once those are removed the cage can be pulled out with the rails as seen in the picture below.  

I suppose it is nice that the hard drive cages are removable en-mass like this, but I honestly cannot see the real world benefit from this utility. I say this only because the ability to remove all the hard drives in a cage at once is predicated upon disconnecting each hard drive individually before hand. As it stands, the hard drives here are not mounted in a hot-swappable configuration so this isn't exactly what I would consider the "server style hard drive mounting" like NZXT claims on their web site.

It is now time to throw some hardware in this beast and see if the fans can keep everything operating cool and happy despite the poor filtering design.