Gadgetory

hey everyone this is Steve from gamers Nexus dotnet and today we're looking at NZXT SH 440 mid tower ATX case I first showed you this case back at CES 2014 where we had the tenacity to call it quote an innovator and the most promising case of 2014 I'll spoil this review for you ahead of time and say that it certainly did not disappoint so what is the H 440 NZXT H 440 is part of their H series of cases big surprise like the H 230 and H 630 which flanked the h4 40s price point and feature set on either side of it the H series tends to be tied to silent and discretion when it comes to design and selling points whereas the Phantom series tends to be a bit more cooling or enthusiast focused and a bit less discreet it has more of a quote unquote gamer look to the outside as a general rule the H Series cases and phantom Series cases both have respective styles in this regard that persists throughout the products within that line the paneling really does not change other than size so first and foremost this case comes with a power supply shroud which is pretty cool this traditionally has only been seen in modded cases and very high-end enthusiast cases like the antique 1900 and I think the Corsair 900 d I want to say has some kind of shroud equivalent but this is a shroud that it curves really nicely with the case it has a chiseled out NZXT period logo you can't ever of course forget NZXT period and that conceals the ugly power supply cabling in such a way that even non modular PSU cables can be contained one other important thing to note the case does not have any five and a quarter inch external optical drive chambers so you won't be able to put an optical drive in here but that's not a big deal just use usb to install your OS and other than that the only thing you really lose are the cool front panels the shroud paneling continues up the side of the drive scaffolding and conceals all six drive bays to keep a cleaner overall look so it's not quite as ugly with the scaffolding visible and aesthetically the age for 40 ships in either black on white or red on black options with white being glossy and black being matte as the base base colors surprisingly I noticed that NZXT is white paint didn't tarnish and smudge as easily as some of the other paint materials that we've worked with it might be that the case is using a similar paint to what Corsair has developed which would reduce the aging effect of light on the white and reduce some of the smudging it's got rather plain paneling all around and grilled vent intakes on the sides of the top and front panels air can also be taken in through the bottom of the front panel and through the bottom PSU fan of course which then gets spat out the back this ties into their appeal to discretion there's no direct front or direct top intake or exhaust no mesh in those places under all the thick metal and plastic paneling hides a 3-1 20 millimeter front intake fans and 1 140 millimeter rear exhaust fan all four installed stock the chassis will support an additional 3 120 millimeter top fans with no bottom fan support due to the nature of the PSU shroud and if liquid is more of your thin the h4 40 can mount up to a 360 millimetre radiator in the top and front positions by removing the modular drive cages a couple of cases support this right now but no one really tops Thermaltake ste 81 + V 71 which support upwards of 420 millimeter radiator is pretty massive in the front on top still those are a completely different audience from the aged 440 so it's not really it's not a direct comparison the H 440 is still one of the best of its size a mid tower ATX to fit a 360 millimetre radiator especially at the $120 price point beyond cooling ease of installation features run rampant and have made all the right tweaks to get me excited about reviewing cases again believe it or not if we look at a lot of cases and I'm going to be honest guys the phantom series I am so tired of looking at because they all look the same they perform pretty similarly the good cases they're just not always exciting to review so this one was awesome to look at plain and simple first of all NZXT has eliminated their flimsy raishin ducing drive sleds for something more sturdy and metal e in that it is made of metal and I've been complaining about these since I reviewed the Phantom 8 20 years ago when I noticed the welcome change at NZXT CES sweet I said hey you got rid of the plastic sleds I complained about in every review I ever wrote to which they replied yeah you and everyone else we listen to the feedback so it's always good to hear that a company isn't too full of themselves to actually learn from others so that's kind of promising from a company standpoint anyway back to ease of installation they've also tacked on thumb screws that don't actually remove all the way but still release their tension it's silly stuff but it's cool you don't need to remove the screw all the way to get the panel off so if you're like me and you have thumb screws all over your house this problem kind of is eliminated in that regard other ease of installation features include the cable management pass-throughs on the power supply shroud and in the board panel of course where you can easily route your cables and stuff the excess into the PSU compartment I would recommend running your video card power through the front most PSU cut out your front panel you end USB and HD audio through the back to PSU cutouts and the rest through the obvious spots on the motherboard mounting panel pretty standard stuff before getting to the benchmark I've only got two worthwhile complaints to mention first the case uses a 4-pin molex power connector for either the fan hub or the LEDs and I'd really prefer that we move away from molex connectors entirely and just replace them with SATA headers in the future they're far more convenient and I mean really what do you use molex for other than stuff that's in a case or the random fan controller that isn't SATA so that's that's something I do want to see go away but not a big not a big dane to the score the other complaint would be shallow cable management depth on the rear side this is pretty easily overlooked given the huge amount of space within the power supply shroud if you look at square inches I'm sure it far and away exceeds anything else out there but that said my 24 pin cable was still a bit too fat and required some serious finagling to get the panel to close so that was another I mean a couple more millimeters would have been awesome neither of these doc any real points from the case though let's jump into benchmarks you can check the full review linked in the description below for our test methodology and bench specs in terms of benchmark performance the H 440 is around average for CPU cooling and dead last for GPU cooling performance I was curious about these results and reran the tests but was met with similar results so I figure this is primarily because of the thick paneling and focus on silence and the damping material and all that other stuff in addition to these smaller intake ports for air so performance was an awful it just wasn't phenomenal it wouldn't stop me from buying the case unless I were planning to dump a 290x in there with a 220 watt CPU or something but if you're doing that you should be running liquid anyway and taking advantage of that liquid cooling support overall I'm actually pretty stoked about the H 440 it's not the best performing on the bench for cooling but the one to two degrees it lags behind I mean honestly it's a couple degrees Delta across the entire bench chart the couple degrees it lags behind are easily made up for by its quality build materials and it's top tier ease of installation features and the overall aesthetic and generally just being a fun case to work with I was very happy with it and at 120 bucks all day long I picked that if you're in the mid-range market the black and red version is also available if you're not much of a fan of this color so check that out too that's all for this review check the link in the description below for the full article and remember to Like comment and subscribe if you liked this video it helps a lot and I will see you all next time peace