Gadgetory

you might think you know where this review will go just by looking at the front panel of the case this is the new NZXT age 500 and despite appearances cooling performance is interesting with this one and EXT has opted for smarter design with its limited fan count of two and it's limited intake options and has bet instead on design making up for an exterior that would be lacking in most other cases the age 500 is a case study literally a negative pressure and we think it illustrates excellently how a tuned fan placement can make up for potential deficiencies in access to air before that this video is brought to you by thermal Grizzly's high-end thermal paste and liquid metal thermal Grizzly's 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 by a tube at the link in the description below the short of this is this is the new s 340 it's a $70 case it's the age 500 not I there's an H 500 I and then an aged 500 NZXT so it took some of our advice here with H 700 I where we asked that they make one called the H 700 D D for dumb and remove some of the smart features so I did that here that I didn't brand it dumb sadly you win some one you lose some so it's the age 500 this is $70 it's the S 240 replacement the I version is $100 and is RGB enabled and has the smart device we would probably just say let's focus on this one for now so that's a 40 was actually really highly regarded it's one of the best selling cases in North America at $70 it has really good build quality it's got a good value it performed okay okay enough anyway for what it was doing and you have to remember although today in the current climate it's not as impressive of a case when the st 40 came out it didn't have a lot of great competition and airflow was good enough considering that all of its competition other than a couple of lesser known brands was really not any better in any aspect anyway so that's 340 is a huge act to follow and following it up with age 500 is odd an only one major way which is that the name doesn't match at all so I'm the X he built up all this good will with the s340 branding that's not even in the es series it's in the H series following the age 700 which has a mixed reputation presently in fact when we were invited to a conference call about this case I declined because I said what could you possibly need to tell me on the phone that I don't already know by looking at it it's just a success or it's the age 700 isn't it the answer was no it's actually not it just shares the same name so a bit of a marketing disagreement there from my perspective where it seems like it should be in the S series if it is an S user place when nonetheless that's just the name and it has nothing to do with the product itself product itself is actually surprising in a lot of ways it's got a true to form identity in terms of the S series case that's ting 40 looks like an absolute 40 they've added a half sheet of tempered glass or 3/4 really and then they've also made a couple of other up fits for modern design and although it may surprise you by looking at the case they NZXT actually did specifically design for air flow and it's something that we tested heavily and found that it performs far better than we expected and this is what we'll get into it a point later talking about how good design can make up for what would look lacking otherwise and even make up for brute force where a lot of the cases will just make up for this design by sticking a bunch of fans in the front at a high rpm you don't have to do that but it is the easiest solution let's go over the criticisms addressed that NZXT looked at for this one so for the H 700 I we had a few main complaints one of them was the smart device there isn't one on the aged 500 at least not one pre-installed and there is one on the H 500 i but that's not the version we're reviewing the important thing is that now customers have a choice of whether they want to pay extra for the smart device or not stripping out the smart device and lowering the MSRP to $70 brings it much closer to what we liked about the original s 340 without any unnecessary bloat to increase the price the var was also addressed this is something we mentioned in the H 700 I review where we said it was artistically bent in a way that wasn't really a great means to rout thicker power cables and that we preferred the older s340 style well that old style has returned on the aged 500 and there are even little cable tie points built into it on the back which is something that we specifically requested in our reviews of other cases so that's been well addressed by NZXT in addition to the smart device option panel fasteners are another thing the H 700 I used for basic thumb screws to hold its glass panel on which is extremely common but didn't really live up to the level of design we saw everywhere else in that case and it was an excellent case overall just remind you we gave it an award and our end of year Awards we just didn't like the smart device in contrast the aged 500 uses a 1/2 panel design that's so simple and functional we're surprised that we haven't seen it used in other cases the bottom edge of the glass is held up behind the upper edge of the power supply shroud and the top edge has two plastic knobs that snap into the chassis and a single thumb screw in the back for security those are really the only negative points of our H 700 I review originally although the smart device took up half of that review and also the front part where it threw it in the garbage but those have all been addressed so I've been told that the smart device is significantly improved will certainly revisit it when we have an opportunity to perhaps after copy tags so it sounds like it's gotten better if you are interested in the I version of this but obviously we don't recommend buying anything until you have some reviews to look at if not ours than someone else's we'll try to look at it if it's gotten better we'll let you know and maybe it can be something worth considering as an alternative to the SD 40 elite but in the very least $70 for this is is a pretty good starting point so the extra 30 bucks for some LEDs and the smart device which it kind of feels like bloatware more than anything where you're paying for stuff that isn't core to the product the product is a case and it's not really a necessary part of a case so it feels a bit odd to spend money on stuff like that especially in the under $100 price bracket however just wanted to note that NZXT says they've been working on it a lot so theoretically it's improved so gently but we'll look at it later for now though let's talk about some of the build qualities of this one including table management space for Kayla management is fairly narrow it's 19 to 23 millimeters and it's tightly regulated by plastic channels with built-in velcro ties the channels can removes for extra room but between the velcro and cable tie points it should be possible to strap everything down tightly enough to make this unnecessary some neatness is required the side panel won't do all the work for you of mashing down big tangles of cables one bit of news and exe is losing ground on the puck battle that's been raging since they sent us the first one as we noticed in the H 500 that it's missing the tiny plastic designated cable router puck found in the Aged 700 I so please take a moment and leave a comment below of f to pay respects for the plastic puck rip in peace we're happy to see removable fan cages become an increasingly common as well as you'll see in the front of the case it makes testing different fan configurations much more convenient and as a user it makes swapping fans easier as well the front fan cage can only hold to 140 or 120 fans the smaller fans are used they go towards the bottom of the case will save discussing whether or not these slots are a good fit in the thermal section all in tanks are filtered on this case and all filters are removable which is important with a stock negative pressure set up the top filter is just a square mesh stuck between the fan in the case which is fine but the filters along the sides of the front panel and under the power supply clip in and have nice plastic frames the filters at the bottom and the side of the front panel are especially nice with mesh sandwiched between two layers of plastic rather than just glued on top they're also comically tiny and narrow but it's nice to see such attention to detail many manufacturers wouldn't have bothered putting anything there at all all filters can be removed without altering the cases appearance which is another significant bonus in the way this case was designed if you do want to take them out you're not even gonna notice from the outside we liked the perforated power supply shroud with two lists two and a half inch sleds in the Aged 700 eye and it's just as good in the aged 500 unlike past NZXT cases there's no space for an SSD between the glass window and the power supply shroud since the shroud is actually the exterior of the but counting the hard drive cage there's still plenty of drive support the top of the power supply shroud has conveniently large cutouts for i/o connectors and PCIe power cables screws including the thumb screws were incredibly tight and this is something that we've been talking about with NZXT cases forever basically since NZXT was one of the first case companies that we worked with and back when it was just me and ever since then thumb screws have been a problem it's not a big deal it's certainly not a big enough deal to change how we feel about a case overall or to change the recommendation but the point is they're starting to really refine their cases and once you do that you're kind of left with small things to work on one of the small things is that the thumb screws are so tight in the stock configuration out of the box that the tool list design is in fact not to lists you do need a screwdriver and this is just something other factory does where the thumb screws are irrationally tight for what they're supposed to do airflow isn't something we've talked too much about so far and the H 500 is the blankest cubist of all the blank cube cases in the minimalist family of design lately except for maybe the s340 elite but the age 500 does have one strip of filtered ventilation along the steel front panel so they've got a bit over on this side nothing on this side there's a bit of ventilation on the bottom underneath and then some ventilation obviously under the power supply shroud on top of the power supply sure there's some perforation helps sometimes but in some cases we've tested where we taped over that completely it actually does nothing just depends on what you're looking at it's got an exhaust then an exhaust up here or intake if you want to reconfigure it and also by the way this top is not 240 compatible NZXT had a very clear design goal and we can respect that they didn't try to be everything for everyone because there's absolutely given a take when you're designing something like a small box but as far as airflow goes it's actually not in the stock configuration right now stock configuration NZXT ships with a rear exhaust fan here and a top rear exhaust fan there that's it no one take vent so what they going for is negative pressure and the result is actually interesting especially for GPO thermals because what happens is because there's negative pressure air with a negative pressure setup air will find a way into the case so it's gonna go through every crack and can find in the case which poses a potential dose problems but NZXT is done well as we noted with placing dust filters that are easily removable pretty much everywhere still though it'll find its way in couple points here dust filtering the top not really necessary it's exhaust and it does actually impede air flow a little bit and it can rattle if it's not tightened all the way which was the case with ours when we got out of the box but that's easily fixed another point because it's negative pressure air also finds its way in through the back here through the i/o or rather through the PCIe slot covers and also through the i/o but it finds its way in so if you have a single GPU set up it'll work in into the video card as we'll show you in the thermal results which is really interesting and then you have radiative heat coming off the back of the card radiating up into the CPU radiator which in this case is at our cooler and that will increase the CPU temperatures a bit relative to a case that has perhaps intake instead of a negative pressure purely set up but again has interesting implications for GPU performance because a CPU can be a couple degrees warmer doesn't really matter up to a point anyway with intel especially less you're at t.j.maxx it behaves pretty much the same although you do want to stay under something like ninety C with an overclock depending what you're working on GPUs are far more sensitive to thermal changes down to a degree of about five where if you have a 5 C swinging thermals you can have a slight drop in clocks we're talking single to low double-digit megahertz but it is far more sensitive so it looks like NZXT has built for that rather than for CPU thermals and it's interesting not really a hundred percent sure what how much of this was intentional versus not but either way air finds its way into the case and we'll just go through the thermal numbers and explain how all that works so as always here's the test bench on the screen briefly just give you a listing of parts you can find the full description the article in the description below where we have Patrick's article that's written up and has all the details including test methodology details starting with the torture test for the NZXT age 500 only data average CPU temperature was 61 degrees Celsius over ambient and the torture test and with the stock fan configuration again as a reminder that's dual exhaust removing the unnecessary top filter lowered that to 57 degrees it's a good thing that NZXT included the filter so that it could be used in case you reconfigured it to top intake but if the stock exhaust fan layout is used it should definitely be removed we left the filter in place for all other tests since that's how the case ships and adding a 140 millimeter intake fan to the upper most of the front mounts lowered TB temperature barely more than removing the filter did down to 56 point 5 degrees while moving both 120 millimeter remove fans to the front and not having any exhaust fans was equivalent to removing the filter at 57.2 degrees exhaust only may not be the best stock configuration but it does leave more room for CLC options in the front if that's the route you want it to go comparatively for CPU temperature the stock 61 degrees Celsius measurement is pretty warm especially for a case that has two fans directly next to the CPU cooler 57 point 3 degrees is perhaps the fairer number to compare since we do recommend removing that top filter that's acceptable but still not great the age 700 I managed fifty three point nine degrees and even the SC 40 elite beat it out at fifty five point eight degrees there's no fan pushing cool air directly into the CPU cooler so the air being pulled towards it has already been warmed by the GPU and it's also dealing with radiative heat off the back of the GPU and obviously as always this will vary based on your system configuration average GPU temperature in the torture test is 52 point four degrees Celsius of the stock fan configuration and 53 with the top filter removed a minor change within margin of error interestingly temperature went up quite a bit with the 140 millimeter intake fan added up to 59 point three and from the eight point nine degrees Celsius with the 120 millimeter fans moved to the front intake this is where the stock fan configuration starts to make more sense if intentional NZXT chose negative pressure because this allows the GPU to draw air in through empty expansion slots rather than relying on intake from the mostly sealed front of the case when front intake fans were added even at once pointing towards the GPU this airflow pattern is disrupted and the GPU can no longer pull air from behind the case at least if it remains a balanced or positive pressure setup that's not gonna happen it'll turn into exhaust instead comparatively the age 500 stock CPU temperature doesn't break any records but it's more competitive than the CPU temperature manages fifty two point four degrees is equivalent to the age 700 I which has twice as many fans and the throne will take core p3 which is an open-air bench basically and has no intake fans it's also right next to the aged 500 B mesh which is good news for the NZXT case and bad news for the readability of our charts we've raised the age 500 P mesh heavily in our review of the case and the age 500 to be clear not the Coolermaster one manages to achieve similar GP performance with more tuned design approaches though cv performance is a different story and it's a bit warmer that's 340 elite average 53.9 degrees so the aged 500 beats its predecessor and at least one thermal category 3dmark is next and acts as a gaming stand-in the GPU operates at fifty four point five degrees over ambiens and is again equivalent to the H 700 I am Thermaltake open-air Corp III but we don't have the SD 40 elite on this chart for comparison the cpu isn't stressed in this test at least not as much and we typically don't point out its temperature but it's worth noting that CPU Delta was several degrees lower in the H 700 during this test 27 verses 34 see again the exhaust fans are pulling hot air up through the CPU cooler and out of the case so it's dealing with radiative heat off the back plate and being spit out of the front of the video card out of the fans for a $70 case it's not advertising itself as a big air flow competitor the H 500 is doing well overall for GPU thermals and although behind them CPU thermals those aren't as important as GPU thermals running blender with CPU rendering we measured an average temperature of 38 point 6 degrees Celsius between the cooler master C 700 P and the extremely forgettable silverstone KL 0-7 differences in this test are fairly subtle so smaller differences become more exaggerated and significant average GPU temperature during GPU rendering was twenty-six point seven degrees Celsius this is also a degree higher than the H 700 I for one so closer to the Leon the Alpha 550 for noise levels to 120 millimetres NZXT fans running at 1300 to 1400 RPM make the age 500 a bit noisier than average at thirty nine point six DB a audibly equivalent to more open cases like the mash spicy and the kukoncar and there was initially some buzzing from the top fan as well as if i braided against the case but we tightened it down foley for noise testing and for the rest of use running the fans out of normal speed should keep the case fairly quiet since the front is sealed and the fans are all at the back just be careful about temperature if you do decide to stop down the fans so the big deal here is that this is a $70 case it's replaced in the s 340 and a $70 case receives different degree of criticism than a $200 case as was the instance with the a7rii separately it's also a case that doesn't really advertise itself as doing a whole lot the age 500 I certainly might as it's supposed to be smart and abled and have RGB LED strips and all that stuff this one it's just a steel box but that's kind of what we want in an s3 40 replacement the whole thing of st 40 was that for its time it was revolutionary and it followed up the aged 440 it had a power supply shroud which is still a pretty new thing that NZXT he popularized with its earlier cases and also it went full steal you didn't see any plastic parts on the outside of that case that was the big deal with it and so they've stuck to that they've stayed true to the brand other than the naming which is a bit of an odd choice to us but that's what NZXT decided to do as a case we like this one the H 500 is good these 500 I without even testing it I can tell you an extra $30 it doesn't seem worth it they may have improved the smart device that's fine if you really want the RGB LED strips I guess get it but there are a lot of cases at $100 that's a furious price point to fight in this one is up against very few cases at the $70 mark that are actually quality engineering or construction course here's got some competition in the area generally and there's a couple other decent cases out there but there's also a lot of garbage at $70 so we do like the H 500 where it's positioned it's okay for thermals it does particularly well on GPU cooling as well as the aged 500 which we actually really liked that case and praised a lot as performing about on par with it in our thermal benchmarking so kind of hard to fault it for that CPU temperatures yes are behind there are way less important if you're using an Intel CPU and to some extent less important on an AMD CPU though it's boosting is more temperature driven than until these days but you can kind of deal with that by changing your cooling configuration stock it's far better than we expect it to be fully honest and engine seats done a good job with designing around a negative pressure setup that actually works now what do we recommend something like a salive for this absolutely not it'll suffocate but also we wouldn't recommend SLI so irrelevant point you could put coolers in here liquid coolers you're going to be limited by what's mountable in the case I think to some extent it doesn't make a lot of sense to complain about for example no 360 support because it's not big enough and also at $70 are you really spending that much money on a CLC but that said it's totally valid that you can't fit a 240 in the top that would certainly be a nice touch it's just you run into the cable management bar so maybe that bar were removable or something you could deal with it is removable it might be okay so we actually took a quick pause while I was going through my point about the 240 radiator because I kind of looked at it might wait a minute that Killa managed to borrow actually is removable so we removed it it's tied to some cables right now and here's where it gets a little weird you could totally fit a 240 in there this is an unzip see crack next 52 that would definitely clear now the problem is there will be minimal fan clearance between the memory and the radiator to be fair so if we're counting for that then we've got a radiator that is thirty millimeters thick or so and you're gonna have a 25 millimeter thick fan so there's your problem the only reason this doesn't support a longer radiator is because you're not going to clear the memory that's in the memory slots so if this case where a couple millimeters higher like maybe seven or so without doing a hard measurement on it just kind of looking it over it would fit a 240 on the top but I guess they were trying to go for a specific size category or maybe they already had tooling they wanted to use or something like that that's really the only it's not even it's not really a heavy complaint it's just like a what-if scenario so yeah what if they went a couple millimeters taller they could have fit to 40 but at least we understand now why they didn't now that I've kind of looked at it more closely and yeah Kayla managed bar can be removed but it doesn't fix your memory clearance issue so anyway the case overall we don't have a ton of hard criticisms for they have addressed all of those from our age 700 I review already so we're happy with age of 500 overall and for $70 case it seems fine that $70 it's hard to complain too much in general well actually that's not sure if you look at some over $50 case reviews but for this one it turned out pretty well so anyway link in the description below for Patrick Troughton review as always go to stored on cameras nexus net to pick up one of our mod mats or one of our new teardown logo laser engraved crystals which we just added an autographed option of those or patreon.com/scishow Nexus to help us out directly thanks for watching I'll see you all next time