Gadgetory

the h200 eye is one of the largest mini ITX cases we've reviewed thus far it's roughly the same depth and height as the micro ATX coarser 280x but a few centimeters slimmer as we mentioned in the past making a large SFF case fudge is the numbers a bit since it automatically makes air flow better and installation easier while defeating the whole purpose of a small form-factor case people generally build mitx because they want a small PC so at 26.1 litres h200 eye has an uphill battle to fight against truly tiny cases like the eleven point five liter SG 13 or 14 litre RB 0-3 before that this video is brought to you by Thermal Grizzlies high-end thermal paste and liquid metal thermal Grizzlies cryo knot is an affordable high quality thermal compound that doesn't face some of the aging limitations of other pastes on the market cryo knot has a thermal conductivity of 12.5 watts per meter Kelvin focuses on endurance is easy to spread and isn't electrically conductive making it safe to use on GPU dies thermal grizzly also makes conductor not liquid metal which we've used to drop 20 degrees off some temperatures than our dee-lighted tests buy a tube at the link in the description below and this is NZ x YZ h 200 i or h 200 a fter this case originally came out and after the h 700 I came out NZXT did eventually remove the I suffix for some of their cases which all it is is the same exact thing except without the smart device the smart device adds up $40 to MSRP for this case so having that I suffix h 200 i is 130 versus $90 for it without the smart device in general we are almost always going to default to the no smart device solution just because the value the value proposition in general is so much better from that standpoint we've heard that NZ XE has improved their smart device from what they've told us we haven't yet retested it since the H 700 i but what we're mainly doing here today is looking at this from the standpoint of an 82 or $90 case rather than a 130 plus dollar case with the smart device so with that in mind it's got a lot of competition at a similar price point the main thing though as with all ITX case is that it's a very unique setup so with ITX a bit different than ATX in that there are so many different ways to build it because it really only has to be so small to fit an ITX board and then the vendors just kind of do whatever they want out to that this case has support for one of the tallest tower coolers that an ITX case reviewed supports so it's not fully small form-factor it's technically mini ITX and that it fits mini ITX solely but it is a larger case overall now some people want that if you want it NZXT is making it for you it's more similar to something like the Manta or the 280 X or even though 11 just a smaller version of it than it is something like the SG 13 or Taku or RB z03 or something like that that's more properly ITX but that's okay there are no hard and fast rules for what companies have to do it's really up to what you think fits for your build just know that this is one of the larger ones we're working with and that carries with it some important notes so Friday our testing will have thermals as always noise is always the problem though with ITX is that it's not perfectly scientific so we can only do so much to control for the environment typically with a case like this you'd put on a bigger cooler this one also supports radiators that some of the other ITX cases don't so you can do a top mount or a rear mount radiator and that would of course give you better cooling power than what we have on here which is a downdraft cool respect for a properly ITX or small form-factor case and the point is that thermals for this it would be much better if we were to change the cooler but we're trying to control somewhat for testing just know that you can do a bit better if you wanted to for your own thermals anyway as far as the cooling setup this case is very interesting for one main reason the H 708 500 cases from NZ FC not to be confused with the cooler masters age 500 had a similar perforated front panel on the sides they also opted for this exhaust setup so it's a negative pressure setup there is no direct intake forced in through a fan it's all being pulled in just through a pressure system because the fan on the back and the top are both exhausting air which means that air will find its way in through any that it can and what that means is that very interestingly the GPO ends up particularly cool in the NZXT eh 500 and even H 200 cases you'll see our thermals today the reason for that as we'll show you in a bit is because as this is negative pressure it's pulling air in through these perforated holes in the front it's pulling air in through the bottom and especially the bottom where the power supply mounts we use an SFX power supply it's smaller this case supports ATX power supplies if you wanted because it's sfx we actually get significant thermal benefit for the GPU which is actually really fun data to look at even if you're not planning to build the ITX we'll be talking about that today but first let's go through some of Patrick's build notes for the case and then we'll get to the thermals material quality on the H 200 is high as usual with NZXT e's current series of cases visually the H 200 is similar to the Aged 700 i but some aspects are closer to the h 500 the steel side panel has no push-button there are two 120 millimeter fans set up in an exhaust configuration and the top of the case is flat except for a single fan mount the cable management bar is back and is appreciated as is the fact that it's easily removable with two screws we mildly criticized the shape of the bar in the H 700 I but it's less obtrusive and conforms better to cable placement in the H 200 I wear H 200 something we also complimented in the H 500 installing and connecting the motherboard was tricky the H 200 I looks like a scaled-down version of the H series design rather than a case built from the ground up for many idx not all aspects of its larger counterparts adapt cleanly to izx boards which are more varied than ATX for example our board has SATA and power plugs along the top edge there's a gap above the motherboard for routing cables but it's blocked by the stock fan at the top of the case this is one advantage of the popular mini ITX cube design laying the motherboard flat on top of the power supply means that all the cables can easily and cleanly reach all plugs regardless of layout the major advantage of this case is size is that it fits most full-size components it supports a total of four 120 millimeter fans or 140 millimeter fans for the two front slots depending on GPU length there's an ample space for a 240 radiator in the front of the case power supply clearance is huge and the only dimension that's obviously cramped is clearance between the GPU and the power supply shroud which we'll discuss in the thermal section we've been pleased to see the trend of removable fan cages in cases recently but the H 200s removable cage is something of an enigma most cases with fan cage like the H 500 are unscrewed from inside the case in the H 200 I the thumb screws for removing the cage are behind the front panel so the hole very firmly attached front panel has to be pried off to access them at that point you might as well not bother taking out the cage at all although it could still make installing a radiator easier we'd rather see a system like the aged 500 where the front panel doesn't need to be removed or a cheaper solution with no fan cage and an easily removable front panel is in place getting is a thermal testing now so for additional task team like we always do we remove these somewhat superfluous filter on the top over the exhaust fan just as we did with the H 500 the reason being that it's an exhaust fan so you're not gonna pull Dustin through there it's literally pushing dust away from it so we removed it just to see if it impact the thermals at all it's nice to have though if you decided to reverse that into a an intake fan for example so it's good to have it but it should be removed stock the negative pressure setup is pretty effective in the H 500 but we anticipate a different behavior here due to the size we did a final test with the top of the power supply shroud taped off because after looking at the thermals in the GP torture section that you'll see momentarily we found it almost odd to the point of considering running some of our tests that the GPU is performing so damn well because it doesn't have any intake directed straight at the video card we thought well maybe it's cuz we using a short card but no that wasn't it and eventually what we realized is that on the bottom of the case the SFX power supply we use is obstructing so little of this intake that a lot of the air can go around the power supply and just filter up through the perforated holes in the top of the power supply shroud so NZXT job well done on the perforation for the tops of power splice rod it actually really works here now the unfortunate side is that if you did use an ATX power supply you lose a lot of that benefit so if possible if any designers are listening what we'd like to see is maybe consider a couple extra holes are extended out a little bit more I know you've got these rails here if you can maybe get rid of an inch of them or if you can't put some holes along the sides of them that would give just a little bit extra breathing room for the video card to naturally pull in through pressure systems the air that it needs it's very interesting performance though and shows how pressure systems work in cases so as always ITX testing is hard to do in any perfect fashion we've controlled for our variables but you could put a much bigger cooler in here so keep that in mind either way let's go through the numbers as it compares to other cases on our bench average CPU temperature for torture tests was sixty three point four degrees above ambient during our primary torture test and that's with both case fan setup as exhaust the default configuration removing the top filter didn't help and there wasn't a significant difference in temperature sixty four point two degrees Celsius over ambient moving in one of the exhaust fans to the upper front slot of the case for a straight front to back airflow pattern did a bit more and dials of T over ambient dropped to sixty point one degrees Celsius there are two front fan slots so the intake fan was recycling some air through the empty slot taping the power supply shroud raised DT about one degree is a sixty four point five but it seems the CPU doesn't heavily depend on air coming from the bottom of the case at first we thought it might be somewhat odd that the top filter would have no effect on our test bench the h200 when it did have effect for the Aged 500 but keep a few things in mind one of them the test components are completely different so that changes everything especially because we're using a tower cooler in our ATX test and a downdraft cooler for this one secondly and also somewhat interesting the two case is the aged 500 h 200 have very different volumes and the significantly larger volume of the aged 500 means that airflow patterns and the pressure patterns are different as they form in the two cases so the same sized fans moving the same amount of air through a smaller space has a more dramatic effect to the extent that something like a filter won't bottleneck us in quite the same way as we saw at the age 500 compared to other mitx cases CPU delta T is around the middle of the pack between the stock SG 13 and SG 13 of the filter removed we currently use a low-profile forty seven millimeter tall cryo egg c7 cooler for mitx testing but the h202 I has 165 millimeters of clearance which is huge this is the first batch of small form-factor testing and it's taught us that there are plenty of cases out there for ITX that are built with normal tower coolers in mind like the core v1 the 280 X and this one it's really not fair to judge the cooling potential of these cases based on an SF F cooler so we're already considering revisions for our next batch of testing but we're going to go through a couple more cases with this one just to see what else we can learn before we do our next iteration next up torture GPU temperatures our next GPU DT was forty seven point six degrees over ambient during this torture test with a similarly negligible chains resulting from removing the top filter front intake made temperature a little worse since it set up an airflow path that would only affect the CPU choosing to move that fan to the bottom front slot rather than the top front slot would benefit the GPU more but at the expense of increasing CPU temperatures taping over the power slide shroud had a huge impact raising DT nearly 15 degrees to 60 2.2 degrees Celsius it seems that the heavy perforation of the PSU shroud combined with our tiny PSU allows cool air to travel through the bottom of the case around the power supply and into the GPU cooler this is important because putting an ATX power supply in this case would have roughly the same effect I'll be at less extreme we recommended using a small form-factor power supply in this case earlier and would stick with it now friends ext it almost might have made more sense to give up ATX power supply support compatibility entirely and just shrink the shroud instead and the stock towards your task 40 6dt compares very favorably with the rest of our test cases the RV's easier through with optimal fan placement is the only one that that is able to beat the h 200 taping the shroud shot made it perform worse than the rest of the charge except the cryo rig Taku this can be a case with surprisingly good GPU cooling as long as a small power supply is used and it's understood that cool air needs to enter the bottom of the case average GPU temperature during the 3dmark fire strike extreme test was forty eight point seven degree is just slightly warmer than the torture test this is the lowest stock TT we've gotten a 3d mark portion of our test cpu DT during blender CB rendering was forty three point seven degrees respectively low the airflow path goes directly from the GPU past the CPU cooler so when the GPU isn't generating any heat CV temperatures are more competitive during the GPU render DVD T was thirty point seven degrees as in the 3d mark test that's lower than anything else on the chart for the same reasons the RM temperature scale pretty evenly with CPU temperatures and the age 200 I didn't change that forty four point one degrees Celsius delta T over ambient during torture testing is warmer than the open air test we did with the Takas drawer open but cooler than the SG 13 and we entered the conclusion as always for these case reviews the only motherboard form factor that will fit into this case as my Mini ITX although it is roughly the size of micro ATX so it's a consideration and that means that light coursers to ATX which is a micro ATX case we find ourselves in a position where we're saying you know what if this is exactly what you want we do like the build quality the thermals are mostly fine and can be better if you just buy components that fit the giant compatibility support for CPU coolers so it's ok it's there's not at $90 - it's fine we wouldn't recommend the I version still yes we know NZXT say they've improved it but ultimately $90 is actually a pretty good value and going over that is entering into territory where we're approaching the really kind of higher-end ITX case is almost the boutique cases so if you want exactly this size it's fine we wouldn't feel any buyer's remorse buying this one for a build that specifically wants this if you're looking for more propriety acts that's where we'd say obviously hard pass it's so big this case that I mean I think I still have the Raven on the floor behind me allow me to demonstrate the size difference here this is the RBZ 0-3 it fits the same part as this case for our testbench however the NZXT one clearly will fit a much wider CPU tower cooler and it's got more radiator support so if those are things that you need well you can't use this case if you don't need them this case is like probably a little under half the size so that's something to consider but we do like the h 200 for its build quality its thermal performance is pretty good part of it almost cheating because it's so large but notwithstanding it is doing well and build quality is good so the next thing we'd say is you know what if you're if this is just the size you're looking for maybe consider micro ATX or something and zxe has options there to the age 500 is not that much bigger and we did actually like that case and it's cheaper 70 bucks so if you're ok with going a couple steps up in size to maybe like here instead of here then consider ndx these other options or other options on the market in general if you want ITX and you want a normal shower box i guess this one's fine so that's what it comes down to not the most exciting conclusion but that's a good thing here because it means that the product wasn't horrendously offensive like a lot of the other stuff we looked at last year I want to say here cases we've looked at so far this year overall have been actually pretty damn good so really exciting to see that see the industry moving in a direction that is clearly iterating on their previous designs improving in a lot of ways so we're seeing that overall and just then on I version is a pretty good deal it's just you know the size thing so consider that as always stores are gamers nexus net to pick up one of our shirts like this one this is the graph logo shirt I'm wearing we have a lot of them in tri-blend available super comfortable sure or you go to patreon.com/scishow cameras Nexus dubs out there and get access to our discord subscribe for more thank you for watching I'll see you all next time