NZXT H2 Classic Silent and well ventilated system enclosure

Author: Jouni 'Jipa' Vasama Published: 22.03.2011 Manufacturer: NZXT Product Group: Enclosures In English Suomeksi

H2 Classic - Installed

The installation was once again a pretty straight forward process. Really the only problem was caused by the drive sledges, they come with rubber grommets to dampen the vibrations and pins that slide on those grommets. The fit is so tight you need to be really careful and patient with the rubber parts, as if they aren't straight, the pins don't sink deep enough and the sledge doesn't slide back in its place. Other than that the tool free features worked really well and even our rather long HD5870 and enormous Thermaltake Frio OCK fit inside just fine.

The gap between the motherboard tray and the side panel turned out to be wide enough the side panel fit in place even with this cable mess. For people with non modular power supplies there's also plenty of space to hide the cables next to the HDD cage.

In use

For the temperature tests we used an AMD Phenom X4 975 Black Edition cooled with Thermaltake Frio OCK and a HIS HD5870. The CPU was stressed with Intel Burntest and the graphic card with Furmark. With both components at full load, the system draws about 400 watts of power from the wall. As always with cases that come with fan controllers, we tested the temperatures with the fans both at their maximum and minimum settings.

Case designs are always a balancing act between cooling performance and noise and the H2 Classic is really aimed at silence, which also shows on the rather toasty temperatures. With the fans spinning at the minimum setting the CPU hit 65 degrees, the HD5870 got up to 82 C and the hard drive also reached a maximum of 44 C. Turning the fans to max dropped the CPU and GPU temperatures by three degrees and the HDD by four.

There are a couple of things worth pointing out with these numbers, first of all it's finally spring over here in Finland, and the ambient temperature during the tests was higher than usually. Also as we're using AMD platform on the tests, the Frio OCK can only be installed one way - blowing air up. This really isn't optimal as there's no roof fan, and also something to keep in mind when buying the case and a cooler.

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