Gadgetory

based on a Ferrari for 5-8 NZXT zat newest full-size ITX tower the Manta has just launched today and we've got the reviewing with thermal benchmarks built quality analysis and more NZXT says it's bubbled case with rounded exteriors is inspired by the ferrari four five eight and you can see that in some of these photos where we've got both of those things together definitely an uncommon occurrence the new Manta uses a stamped curved steel paneling all around which as far as we're aware is the first case to use the stamped and curved steel side paneling it is an all steel enclosure with all steel external paneling and uses some plastic reinforcements and clips in a few other places the full-size ITX Tower sells at $140 ships with two front 120 millimeter fans and one rear 120 millimeter fan it's got support for alternatively two 140 millimeter front fans if you want to replace them or put a radiator in there two 140 millimeter or 120 millimeter top fans and then you can fit up to 280 millimeter radiators in the top and front or 120 in the rear CPU clearance is good for 160 millimeter coolers the curved exterior is obviously the biggest feature here and a bit of a risk for NZXT you can see they've gone with their trend of axing the five and a quarter drive bay is something that I definitely agree with and allows this full ITX form factor but in terms of whether you like the rounded edges or not is really up to you not me so I will leave that to the video and photos to discuss in terms of actual component features there is a fan hub on the rear side of the motherboard tray over here and that's a pretty smart inclusion because with ITX cases you're going to have an ITX motherboard and those generally have maybe one or two fan headers so that is a big limitation with ITX boards and by adding a fan hub in their stock they can take care of that immediately there's also an LED controller for the PSU shrouds and ext illuminated text which is something that's been done since the maybe the H 440 I think may have been the first one to institute that and the s 340 has carried that on with the Noctis 450 following after the s 340 so it's got the PSU shroud unlike the previous cases I just named there are no SSD sleds on top of the PSU shroud and that's because the proximity of the video card there's basically no clearance however the top of the PSU shroud has been changed so that it's got these sort of grilled drafts in the top instead and that allows in theory a tiny bit of air to get through to the GPU now it's not a lot and if you look closely at the front of this case where the fans are installed stock our setup has it so that the lower fan is actually halfway into the power supply shroud and so you're funneling audio air straight into a wall basically then the top one is lower and in line with the exhaust fan so that one does make sense I would move the front fans up a little bit though and we did actually test that but we'll talk about that later speaking of tests we did a lot of them with this case and we're pretty excited about it this has a lot of tests on the fan position size and radiator location in the case so you can see optimal fans set up in a case like this but most of that will be in the article hit the link in the description below for that we'll go over some of it briefly here in this video speaking to a few points about the case in terms of build quality aesthetics and overall feature set the case is almost entirely made of steel with a few plastic inlays supporting the hardened shell and it is very much like a turtle shell it's sturdy surprisingly heavy for the form factor and inflexible which is a good thing looking inside the outward bowed window we see an interior that resembles a shrunken version of the s 340 with PSU shroud cable management bar and cleared front for airflow and minimalism the SSD sleds have been moved off that shroud and into the immediate East area of the cable management bar unfortunately that actually restricts installation of non SSD 2.5 inch form factor devices so for example NZXT sq+ RGB LED controller does not fit in those two SSD sleds and that is a huge oversight and a very unfortunate one because I really wanted to install it there to get sort of the NZXT look for you know nice shots for video but it didn't fit hail management cutouts exist in the usual places including directly in the PSU shroud for routing the PCIe wiring straight to the GPU two other minor criticisms I have immediately our the USB 3.0 front io I think this may be their factory defect or something else that's probably not a wide issue but the headers didn't line up perfectly with the top panel so in order to get those to line up we remove the top panel not hard to do and then just sort of warp the headers back into place so that USB 3 devices could actually use so that is a problem we've seen before in NZXT cases and it's probably just a factory thing the thumb screws are another factory issue for basically all the manufacturers at this point Corsair and NZXT are the two big ones that I can think of where the thumb screws aren't really thumb screws because you have to use a screw driver but that is such a minor issue we really can't dock any real points on it because you're building a system once and then you just hand tighten it next time but I'm still mentioning it because I want to see NZXT and coarser and all these other manufacturers actually fix it so their thumb screws are useful without the tool that's not to speak ill of the case though because there are a lot of good things about this case without even getting to the benchmarking and one of those is just how sturdy the paneling is and how easy it is to remove so the front panel you just pull from the underside and it clips in with several plastic clips that are thick and won't break easily which is a problem I've had with a lot of cases the Corsair 400 C included that review is coming this week where we snap the alligator clips that hold the paneling in place so that didn't happen with this it's very sturdy and it is somewhat reinforced so I did not have to worry about that the case is also exceptionally quiet and this is something I wish we did benchmarking for but decibel levels are one of the only factors and any type of component that we don't currently review because it's very hard to do accurately we can't do it accurately we don't test it at all subjectively I can tell you that the audio emissions the noise emissions coming from this case are fairly low and that's because of the thick steel paneling there's obviously some pretty limited airflow here the meshing only exists on the sides of the top and front panel but that does give you some benefit of noise level control so you trade off a bit of air for noise levels and something like the thermaltake cor v1 another mini Eck's case does the opposite it's all mesh so it's got superb air flow potential anyway but it's a bit noisier so there's a trade-off to be made there and that is up to you to decide on what you want more let's get into the testing all the test methodology is on the website we use the thermaltake core v1 ROS what legacy w1 I weigh power revolt 2 which is not available separately and the NZXT Manta for these tests the first charts show thermals at equilibrium for only the mantas fan configuration so we don't have the competing cases on here just yet after these we'll move to the comparative analysis first off this matrix shows our testing configuration for the Manta only benchmarks the goal was to define the most effective fan and radiator configuration and that's exactly what we tested here for CPU temperatures the triple exhaust configuration produces the lowest readings at 34 Celsius though idle is noticeably higher at fifteen point two Celsius it does not necessarily follow that the coolest load configuration will produce the coolest idle configuration there's a bit more involved than that this is something we've seen in a few other cases as well but correlating the triple exhaust setup to the GPU chart now it becomes apparent that this is in fact one of the worst configurations possible because it pushes the GPU into the seventy 1.4 Celsius delta T over ambient range which means that once you factor in ambient if we assume about 20 Celsius or 70 degrees Fahrenheit thereabouts we've now got a GPU that is thermally throttling at 90 Celsius for absolute temperature and that is not what you want so we can't use the triple exhaust setup that's not good for thermals conversely the GPU is the coolest with three fan stock setups so if you just use a two intake one twenty one rear exhaust 120 and the radiator configured in the rear so it's not front mounted in this instance the GPU is at sixty three point two delta T over ambient four Celsius readouts and that's achievable because of two factors one the front intake is unobstructed and does not pass through a radiator which obviously pushes a bit of heat into the case though not much and the exhaust is a single fan setup and not overpowering the blower fans ability to cool itself so it's not stealing air from the lower part of the case this setup though is the worst for the CPU by a couple degree at least several degrees actually the best setup overall that we found if you're using a radiator anyway is to run the one by 120 millimeter top rear fan and a front radiator so that gives the best value without going to a five fan setup which is really pretty poor value overall because the thermal gains are marginal it's kind of middle-of-the-road and it's more expensive and it keeps the GPU temperatures at a superb at sixty three point three Celsius which for a reference cooler is pretty good comparatively two cases of this size especially it only raises the CPU to thirty seven point zero eight Celsius which is not bad either considering it's a case that focuses at least somewhat on silence and discretion and since most radiators include a fan it's likely that CLC users will be running for fans anyway let's move on to the comparative charts thermaltake score v1 is the best with both GPU and CPU thermals at equilibrium producing thirty eight point two one Celsius CPU temperatures against the amantha's forty two point three Celsius the legacy is only slightly warmer than the v1 but sits at significantly higher idle temperatures with a five point one Celsius readout the differences between these cases are mostly inconsequential until we get to the revolt to which we'll discuss in a future review the GPU temperatures for the V one are at sixty two point six eight Celsius load and run pretty warm idle with an eight point four for reading the idle readout is warmer than the others because thermal tape relies upon the GPU to pull its own air so it's got to pull its own weight as it's slightly off-center from the intake fan in the front the Manta sits at 63 point two five @ Celsius load which is really not bad at all for a small case it's barely more than the therm will take v1 which is pretty darn cool for again a small case overall we've got nothing to complain about in terms of thermals for the most part it's long you set it upright don't do the multi exhaust setup though because that one is a bit stressful for the GPU because it's siphoning all the air from it and that's why these tests were fun to conduct because we can look at the airflow patterns of different radiator setups and learn for instance that a front-mounted radiator is very efficient at keeping the CPU cool because it's pulling in fresh air from outside the case and pushing it through now that some heat into the case and also obstructs intake a little bit so that can impact the GPU however if we stick to just one fan in the rear exhaust slot it doesn't steal air from the GPU and it's able to keep cool on its own just using the blower fan so pretty interesting test if you want to learn more about these tests do check the article link in the description below let's get to a conclusion though at $140 the Manta is definitely a steep buy and in an odd market segment many ITX cases are competitive and tend to either be expensive like the silverstone SGO 8 or pretty cheap like the throne will take corvy 1 which is $50 right now the mantle ends middle-of-the-road and its price just as it does with its size and that's one of the most interesting points for the case it's not a shoebox like something the SG 10 or SG o8 r from silverstone or the core v1 not quite a shoebox but definitely smaller and it's also not a mid tower like NZXT s340 so where does that put it it puts it in this sort of strange full ITX tower category which is not to say it's bad or unusable just that it's different and that means that for me personally I would not have this in a home theater setup I'd go for something smaller again like Silverstone options or any number of other small ITX boxes that are more shoebox-sized that's what I would go with for a home theater setup where I want absolute discretion and out of sight out of mind type of setup for the enclosure for something like a literal desktop computer like this being on a literal desk it does start to make sense and that s340 would fit on a desk as well for the most part but if you're looking for minimalism you don't care about the extra drive bays you don't care about the extra space for an ATX form factor motherboard and you want an ITX setup that's I guess a little bit more portable like this is then it's not a bad buy at $140 it's certainly somewhat expensive it enters the enthusiast range but the materials are all very heavy-duty steel it's a quality construction and personally speaking I think that it looks good I was originally a pretty vocal I was I was not for or against the design and article in the past I referred to this as the whale because I thought it looked like a bloated whale but that was used somewhat in jest because we didn't have a name for the case yet so we had to call it something and whale just stuck for a one-syllable easy name and I will say that the sort of wide-angle lenses we use don't do the case justice it's not nearly as warped as it may look in some shots you'll see online depending on what kind of lenses people are using but it is absolutely bowed outward a little bit and if you don't like that that's completely fine don't buy it buy something that's a little more boxy instead or whatever suits your taste so that is the one point here that I would say is a potential negative for most people because thermals are fine they're not amazing nothing to write home about but they're not bad and the form factor is a bit strange but again not bad so it's just in an odd market segment but the look is something that is either yes or no so that is ultimately the deciding factor and then of course 140 bucks is pretty deciding - so that's all for this review hit the links in description below for more information and hit that patreon link the postal video if you want to help us out directly thank you to all of you who do help and who are subscribers and I'll see you all next time