Gadgetory

wolves ooh guys welcome back to the channel today I'm checking out a brand new case from NZXT this is their s340 elite and if you're watching this video on the day of upload that means this case just launched today hey brand news it's hot so obviously as the name suggests this is working off of or this is an iteration I should say of the original s340 already a very popular critically acclaimed case so there have been some much-needed improvements of that case with the elite version and we're going to be going over that today now retail price first off MSRP in the US is $99.99 let's just call it a hundred dollars flat comes in full matte black there's not another freakin color on this thing it's just pure black I love it it's like the monolith from 2001 Space Odyssey however they are gonna be releasing a matte white and a matte black and red version later this month so stay tuned for that if that's more your thing but I personally like the all black finish still get the very same simple and sleek minimalistic design looks beautiful nothing really on the front it's just ooh slab NZXT logo on the bottom on the back you've got a 120mm your fan mount with the included fan right there of course seven expansion slots and a power supply bracket with thumb screws for removable easy entry of your power supply however look at this little power supply filter dust filter that doesn't suck the s340 the predecessor had a dead jack for a dust filter it just had it just had the screen there was no like casing around it there was no frame it was just a flimsy flimsy old screen held in by little tiny latches with horrible this one's on a rail system it's not magnetic but it still gets the job done very nice improvement there and of course the one that's probably been glaring you in the face since this video started is the gorgeous tempered glass side panel this thing is 100% tempered glass there's no plastic or anything on here there is some black trim there's some black colored trim to match and blend in with the edges of the chassis itself but other than that left to right top to bottom 100% visibility of the inside of your chassis so none of your hard work that goes on inside of the case goes unnoticed makes me very nervous but it's also very beautiful to look at so good on you mates for that NZXT you get four thumb screws to attach it to there very securely with the the indents for a Phillips head screwdriver always nice to see on the very bottom you get the same four feet with the rubber bottoms that you saw on the predecessor as well so it elevates your case now on the top of the case there are some interesting things here now apart from the 120 or 140 mm your fan mount which they do include a 120 here that's 120 right yep that's 120 which is set to exhaust I would recommend intake because there's no dust filter on the top here you do get some very nicely updated front panel connectors to make your gaming desktop experience that much more simplistic and efficient particularly for VR so when we go down that apart from your headphone and mic jacks you also get 2 USB 2.0 2 USB 3.0 and in HDMI port so there is an HDMI pass-through cable inside this case with an HDMI port at the top so you can actually plug in a VR headset which is so much nicer if you guys are early adopters you have an HTC vive or an oculus rift for instance you know that it's a pain in the butt to fish around the back of your case to constantly plug it in and and unplug it whenever you're not using it because a VR headset is not a peripheral that just stays on your desk Ahana percent of the time you pull it out when you're ready to use it or you pack it up and you wrap it up when you're when you're done with it boo boo so the HDMI port on the front of the case makes it much easier to get in and out of your VR experience and they've also included this very handy magnetic cable management puck I've never seen one of these before it actually comes apart so what this does is it slaps to the the front your case like so basically you can wrap up your your cable length all the cable length from coming from your stupid VR headset can just wrap around that thing and then you can either put the VR headset on top of your case which maybe I would recommend because the matte finish while it's not very thick or fingerprint prone can scratch a bit easily so maybe you could just hang the VR VR headset straight onto the puck or you can just keep it on your desk area either way a very elegant and classy solution for wrapping up them cables but also keeping your VR equipment nearby when you're ready to use them and the reason why the puck splits apart is so if you have an extra lengthy cable you have more room to wrap it up with handy now obviously at this point you guys can tell that this is not a standard scripted review of mine in any way instead I thought it would be kind of cool a little bit different to actually just do a hands-on bill with the s340 elite get my hands dirty a little bit so to speak and just kind of document along the way what works for me and what doesn't with this you case so I think it's gonna be fun excited I think this bill is gonna look pretty badass by the end of it I just kind of scrambled scrounged around for some hardware in my room but it's looking pretty good I think it's gonna look really good on that little tempered glass in the side paneling Oh all right let's build the crap out of this thing all right so I have removed the side panel and them instilling the motherboard so the s340 elite has pre-installed standoffs and the the center standoff is actually a raised post many of you guys are familiar with that just helps you to Center the board and keep it in place just like so while you install the rest of your standoff screws tape you're cool I'm gonna go ahead and bolt this board down make sure it's nice and snug now on to the radiator installation we're gonna have to pop this front panel off comes off just like so it's got a couple latches that easily allow you to remove it and replace it also just like the old s340 you've got tons of ventilation at the top and bottom here so even though it gives off a really enclosed look it looks super sleek doesn't look like much airs getting through there but there actually is it's coming through both sides of the chassis that way and then you've also got a magnetic dust filter a very long one full-frontal filtration very nice now a couple mounting options at the front here you can do to 120s or up to two one 140s so we've got again to a 280 millimeter radiator here however the caveat of the s 340 and the elite as well you can't install the radiator first you have to install the fans first and then the radiator because there's just not enough clearance to install the radiator first due to the the front IO connectivity up here it's actually blocking this rather a long radiator so we're gonna have to do is install the fans first so that can be that can be a bummer if that's not exactly the configuration you were looking for I was hoping to see maybe that NZXT had done something about that with the elite version but nay oh I'm stalling these fans the wrong way damn it Kyle you never built a computer before so I'm gonna go hoses at the top of the case from here on out she kind of just screw you just screw your way to victory I should also mention that there's plenty of cutouts behind these fans here to route your fan cables through to the backside of the case there's a look at the front and we're not quite done with the front yet we shouldn't be replacing the front panel on just yet because we're going to install the hard drive next and you actually need access to this area right here in order to mount that so all right we've got a single two terabyte WD black that route stalling here I'm just going to slide that in like so there's a two two bays for three and a half inch drives and these are just straight-up bare-bones there's no rubber anti-vibration padding of any kind this I mean this looks like it could have been from like a 50 dollar case or something it's pretty it's pretty minimal here and you're probably asking yourself well why even though why are you doing this storage right now it seems kind of early in the build do storage well therein lies potentially another shortcoming of this case and I'll show you that right here alright so here's the hard drive from the other angle and normally in a typical build I would install the power supply first before ever touching the storage but in this particular scenario you can see you just saw me a screw in two two screws from this side of the hard drive but there's a third one that we got to get on the right on the right side in order to get that one we kind of got to like put our hand in here and dig around for it it's not the easiest screw to get in there you kind of have to look and block the camera a little bit and there you go so as you can see I'm really using all the clearance I can get from my hand to be able to access this screw here you can see I've also switched to a shorter screw driver in order to make that that connection there so having a power supply installed first would have made things a little bit more difficult especially with certain cables sticking out as it is not fully modular the unit that we're using today now another edition that NZXT is added to the s 340 with the elite version is that you now get an SSD mount at the front of your case right on the wall of your power supply shroud you still get the two that are on top of the power supply shroud with beautiful cutouts so you can route your SATA cables through however you've also got this one on the front here which is much more visible through your tempered glass side panel and you've got a little cutout here to route your cables to the right of that SSD however those cables if you're going to be mounting your SSD there also need to pass through this hard drive cage for your three and a half inch mechanicals so if you were to have an SSD mounted at the front and a second mechanical hard drive in this cage well you would kind of be blocking any SATA cables from that SSD because there's really not much room for them to pass through at this point with the two of the drive slots occupied so what you would have to do is probably either install the SSD somewhere else but if you really want to show it off and you want to have it in that slot you could slot your second mechanical drive at the mounting point at the very bottom of the case so you do have three potentially potentially three slots or three mounting positions for your three and a half inch drives and this is pretty much at the very floor of the chassis you would have to basically turn the case on its side and bolt in or screw in this drive from the very bottom it also supports a two and a half inch drive down there so in total you get three three and a half inch drive mounts as well as four SSD maps to on top of the power supply shroud one at the front of the power supply shroud or on the side of it I should say and one at the very bottom of the case next up is the power supply installation which is pretty straightforward you've got this bracket at the back that I mention it with you thumb screws comes out really easily like so mount the bracket to the power supply shove all the cables in first through the back of the case you want to make sure that the power supply is facedown of the fan is facedown on that power supply because you do want to take advantage of that dust filter there isn't really much ventilation at the top of that power supply shroud so you would be starving your power supply for airflow if you mounted it the other way and then you just screw in the thumb screws voila but a baton but a boom but a boom now we're going to go ahead and install our SSD here I've chosen this position because it's unique to the elite version of the s3 40 so what I to do is first undo the mounting plate with this thumb screw single thumb screw love that it's just one screw it deal with so here's the mounting plate we're going to go ahead and screw the SS key to the plate just like that and then before we replace the mounting plate with the SSD attached what I like to do is actually route to my SATA cables through the hole first so there's the data cable power cable is oh boy yeah alright and I like to connect these first to the SSD before I install the plate back to the case just makes a little bit easier you can kind of already bend the cables ahead of time knowing which way they're going to need to turn line up plate with the notches on the case and replace that thumb screw done so now I think we're ready to start connecting and routing all of our cables in the system starting with the a i/o we're going to route our power and fan connectors through here so you can see I'm routing it through a cutout that's directly above the motherboard it's a pretty spacious cutout it's got room to pass some through you've also got another nice big cut out by your 8 pin EPS connector here by the CPU they're not grommeted but they are pretty damn high up there on the case so they're pretty much out of sight doesn't bother me too much as far as our USB 2 connector for the pump or I'm sorry for the software support for this this kraken we're just going to route it through it just routed it through the one of the two cutouts that's on the power supply shroud these cutouts are for little connectors like that your front panel connectors which we're going to connect right now as well as the two SSDs that would go on your power supply shroud there and God said let there be sound and he plugged in the HD audio connector 8-pin EPS into house here comes the 24 pin ATX motherboard power connector which I'm passing right underneath the cable management bar which is a familiar familiar feature from the original s340 you guys remember that this bar right here it actually has a pump mount here as well for custom water cooling but this is a really nice solution that just offers a really clean aesthetic while hiding all the cables that we'll be plugging into the side of your motherboard like like your 24 pin ATX your USB 3.0 which on the Maximus 8 formula is actually a right-angle connector so I think it actually works out better with this particular cable management system set K by the one and other SATA cable now one thing I want to point out about this cable management bar is that well it does a really nice job of concealing a lot of the motherboard cables here that plug in to this side of the board it simultaneously blocks your radiator and it kind of limits the clearance of your front radiator support so for example I could not do a push-pull configuration right now because this cable bar would be in the way there's just no physical way to get another two fans on here even even at this lower section where the bar doesn't protrude quite as much this it's still covering up these these two screw holes here on the radiator so that's kind of a bummer if you want to do some custom water cooling what you're probably going to want a thicker radiator than what's on the Kraken x61 but unfortunately you're gonna have to remove this cable bar which I believe it is removable yes there's one two three four five I don't know five or six screws holding it in place which seems like a lot I don't know why there's so many damn screws holding it in place I mean it's also providing some structural integrity to the chassis so perhaps that's why it's got so many screws in it but you would have to remove this if you wanted to expand on the front radiator solution of your particular built so bear that in mind then I forget about these front panel connectors didn't you well I didn't get ready to install our video card now we've got this little metal plate at the back of the case that's held in place with two thumb screws easily comes off just gives you better access to the other thumb screws holding your expansion slots in place you do I hate it when manufacturers tighten thumb screws to the point where you need a screwdriver just seems counterintuitive damnit I just realized I installed the wrong PCI slot Samba batch here we go alright so we've got a gtx 1080 here founders edition i'm sorry this is a 1070 nambas Edition which is about a 10 inch card I believe so obviously you can go probably twelve maybe even 13 inches whoa on the graphics card length if you so wished so yeah I mean you can install pretty much any length graphics card for the most part if you're gonna be rocking a similar setup as this bear in mind however if you were to remove the cable management bar and have like a super fatty push/pull radiator at the front of your case that is going to limit how long your graphics card can be due to dududududududu cable management time so here's our first look at the business end where all the cable management takes place and first off there's a pretty large CPU cooler cut out here so you could replace your CPU cooler without having to uninstall your entire motherboard you could just access the the CPU cooler backplate from this area right here which is very very convenient and you've also got a lot of tie down points that you can see strewn about the case which is also very handy however one of the big improvements here on the backside over the original s340 are these cable clasps right here located here here here and here you get four of them in total and they are incredibly handy this is probably my favorite I don't know a favorite cable management solution in a case I like this more than cable ties tie-down points you know velcro straps all that sort of thing these are pretty freakin sweet the only complaint that I have here is that they feel a little bit on the cheap side especially when you open them all the way it kind of feels like the plastic gets really weak as soon as you open it you know any anywhere past about this point which makes you a little bit concerned it kind of like I don't know it causes a little bit of concern while you're building which is never a great thing I haven't had any problems with them snapping or breaking however I've just started building with it right now if you were to do three or four builds in the case like this would these wear out over time and eventually maybe snap off possibly I don't know but from the looks of it they do that they do a great job they just feel a little bit it on the economical side and I don't really want to test them too much further but why don't we go ahead and start wrapping things up here with the cable management of course you have plenty of space right in front of the power supply of course your mileage will vary if you have a really lengthy power supply you might not have as much free space down here for storing excess cables oh look what's that that's the HDMI pass-through beautiful I have never seen one of these in the case before I guess there's a first for everything so that's kind of cool of course our our founders Edition card does not support HDMI on the front there so we're going to tuck that away for now and I'm just going to go ahead and wrap up the rest of this stuff with the help of these handy cable clasps you know what in fact we actually have so much freaking room for cables back here that I'm going to add some of these extensions oh hello SATA hello say that would you like to meet my other SATA port we can have a SATA party crazy Express sometimes you're so expressive now for your PCIe cables that power your GPU you do still have that cut out on the power supply shroud if you want to write it straight from the bottom there however personal preference of mine I still like routing mine from the side here peeking out through the cable management bar and then we've got fans bitches these cable ties make it super easy to remove or add any cables to the bunch with just like zero effort at all I mean I haven't spent any time I've barely spent any time on cable management in this case and it looks it looks like I have so that's that's definitely saying something and just like that our build in the s340 elite is pretty much complete but there is one more thing that i want to talk about before we close up the video and I give my closing thoughts on the case is this new product this other product that just launched with NZXT this is their internal USB hub it's a USB 2.0 hub so something like this would come in real handy where you'd actually plug this into your motherboard 2.0 header along with some DC to molex power I do wish this was SATA that would be I would have been clutch guys that would've been super clutch but then basically expands your USB 2.0 connectivity of course the the the lead that goes to your motherboard connects to this white port here and then you've got three additional headers three USB 2.0 internal headers as well as to external headers so this is just great for things like you know a i/o liquid coolers for example or lighting accessories fan controllers all that sort of thing the best part about this probably my favorite is that it's completely magnetic so if we turn the camera up here so check this out boom how about this boom one more boom yeah you get it it's a magnet so it sticks to pretty much any magnetic surface in your case which makes it really easy to just store away in your build of course you wouldn't be able to put it here for example because it wouldn't have enough clearance for the side panel to go back on but if you wanted to store it say underneath your power supply shroud the bag that's pretty much do all the work you don't have to like bust out any cable ties or velcro straps to to restrain it to make sure it doesn't get tossed around it pretty much just stays in place with that magnetic feature pretty cool I'll leave a link to this guy in the description below if you guys want more info on if you need to future-proof your cases for a USB 2.0 connectivity you need some additional expansion it's a pretty handy feature or a tool to have I should say but on that note this bill is complete so we're gonna go ahead and slap the side panel back on and close this video out so here she is everybody all decked out but the side panel slept on there and I will say with the tempered glass it really breathes new life into the s340 it just looks amazing in person I don't know how how good it looks to you guys on camera but it just looks phenomenal in my opinion you can just really see a lot more of the the system itself it just tempered glass just there's no comparison compared to acrylic or plexi so good on you guys at NZXT for that upgrade there's just so many little improvements that really add up to make this a much better case than the original including those cable management clasps at the back even though they're a little on the cheapy side they still do a great job at keeping everything nice and tidy the side panel on the back Flint on like super easy no problem there also the the SSD mount there were a couple cons here right the SSD mount at the front while I do like this new implementation I think it looks fantastic having an SSD right behind the tempered glass you do have to route the SSD cables through that three and a half inch mechanical drive Bay which can cause issues if you wanted to populate both of those slots however I did notice there's a small cutout to the left of the SSD which you could route your SSD cables through there but it looks like you would have to flip your SSD upside down and no one wants to really display their SSD in that inverted position so that's kind of a moot point there also the cable management bar still brings home all the same great assets that it did in the original case however it's just in the way if you wanted to expand on the radiator solution that you see here if you want anything thicker than a 1520 millimeter radiator or you want to do push-pull for example you would have to remove that cable management bar but that bar is such a crucial element in terms of aesthetics and feature set to the s3 the s3 40 line that would be kind of a shame to have to remove it for any reason at all also mad props to the updated dust filter for the power supply that's a huge improvement as well and last but not least you guys probably noticed the oculus rift that's hanging on the front of this case utilizing that magnetic cable management puck which actually did have two separate because to wrap the full length of that cord it's a pretty long cable and also utilizing that front panel HDMI port which if you guys are into VR you're planning on building a vr gaming system this is the next case to get until more competitive options at this price point rollout with similar VR oriented features because it's just it's perfect for this sort of thing so all together great job NZXT if you guys want more information on this chassis you can find a link in the description below also if you feel free to check out my awesome sauce no it's bit wet now dear my bit wit store where I'm still selling t-shirts like the CPU cooler shirt that you see me wearing here help support the channel and all that sort of thing also feel free to toss me on the video if you enjoyed it that is all for now guys be sure to subscribe for more tech stuff coming at your really soon and I will see you all in the next video