A budget case offering from NZXT with pretensions of grandeur – does it deliver? Only one way to find out...
NZXT is never going to be a great case-maker, but we suspect that's not the company's plan. Rather, NZXT excels at delivering cheap and cheerful cases with a range of high-end features, but with enough cut corners to keep the price down. So what corners are cut, and is the efficiency of the case compromised?
The NZXT Tempest Evo is aimed squarely at gamers who want a flashy and powerful system. Aggressive angling on the front and top fascias highlights this design ethos, and this only enhanced by LED lights running the full length of either side of the front panel, and blue LED fans on the front and side panels. Given this "Look at me, I'm a gaming system!" attitude, it's odd then that the side-panel is tinted. So, it's more of a "Look at me, but not too close." kind of feel.
The Tempest Evo features the usual IO options: two USB 2.0 ports as well as audio and eSATA.
In terms of build and construction, the NZXT has very little surprises, and very little to excite. The plastic front fascia will not be to everyone's liking, and the plastic thumb screws that secure the side panels will be even less so. The tinted window, too, is pretty cheap plastic, though it's nice to see a sturdy metal mesh over the fan intake. There's a similar mesh on the top of the case to protect the two fans there, and a finer plastic mesh on the case's front to keep pesky dust and other crap out of the delicate interior.
With the side panel off, however, things do look up a little. The interior is nicely anodised black metal all over, and with an interesting mix of tooled and tool-less design options. The front of the case is the most interesting area, with a total of nine 5.25in bays, six of which are taken up by two caddies that each house four 3.5in drive bays. The free 5.25in bays are tool-less, but rather loose, while the HDD caddies feature a slide-in, slide-out mechanism to make swapping drives relatively painless. Again, it's not the most secure mechanism, so if you're planning on LANing with this case, adding a single screw to each drive is going to be a good idea.
The rest of the interior is solid, if uninspired. The PSU rests on four rubber nodules, which is good for keeping things quiet, but this is off-set by the fans, which generate a lot of noise. The case itself isn't an acoustic wonder, either. Unless you game or compute while wearing headphones, you'll be very aware whenever you turn any system housed in the Tempest Evo.
The motherboard tray is relatively roomy, and features a CPU cutout and a nod to cable-management in the shape of two rubber coated cable cutouts. In reality, though, the rubber grommets here tend to easily pull out, and there isn't quite enough room to deal with every last length of cable. Speaking of cables, though, this new iteration of the Tempest at least features black IO case connectors.
If you're really insane, you can even strip out the top fans in favour of a radiator for a liquid cooling setup, but if you're going that far down the dark path of enthusiast computing, you should really be able to afford a more appropriate case.
For the low price, and the amount of cooling (albeit noisy) you get, the NZXT Tempest Evo is a pretty solid buy. Yes, there are some touches that don't really endear it to us, but if you're looking for a bold, well-lit case to house a hot-running gaming system, there are worse choices you could make.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012