Gadgetory

well-well-well where we got here and then closer from Zalman do you guys remember Zalman they produce these very unique circular aluminum and copper CPU tower coolers this is the first time we're checking out is almond enclosure so it's not very easy to impress us when it comes to cases considering how many fantastic releases we've seen in the past six months or so but the z9 neo looks actually quite promising now the scale of one to ten how excited am I to build inside this case well like a seven I think that's a very good score for a budget enclosure like this considering it's like a hybrid it borrows all these very good elements from like the age of 40 to define our 5 and the N through series and combines them all into such a budget enclosure this thing is $69 us which means there's usually some compromises along the way but in the bigger picture this might actually be one of the best budget cases that we they can look at in the past six months now when it comes to budget stuff there are three things that I look out for feature set building experience because sometimes that can be a total frustration despite the other elements being proper and then the third one is build quality I feel like my the building experience will be here top-notch considering the feature set and like it's fairly large there isn't anything that's sort of standing out on my way just yet the feature set like I said it's boring a lot of these features that are awesome and the build quality that might be the one of the only compromises here especially considering we have the white version the black version I think would be a little bit more uniform in terms of color but with white it's very difficult or it's maybe a more pricey to get the white on the steel and plastic to match so the steel the steel white here is a little bit off it's more cooler versus the white on the plastic slightly warmer so there's a bit of a color discrepancy here equality of the panel itself the metal is thin pop over for such a large window I'm very impressed with the rigidity of the panel itself I think that's because of the the plastic here is protruding a little bit so that's reinforcing a panel for the back panel it doesn't have any window and it's actually a lot more flexible than the window panel weird the top and front plastic pieces are okay we have a glassy piece here that opens up we have some noise dampening material here intake port no dust filter that is visible here which is we'll get to in a bit but all the air intake is coming from the sides why do we have a glossy front panel but a matte white surface at the top I find that a little bit strange to see but in order to access the front filter the front panel is removable very nice and easy however as you can see all the front panel connections are attached to the panel this is one of those things that it's like why can't they make a little module that sits on the frame itself so that when you do have to remove the panel you don't have to potentially risk ripping any of these wires or something another cost-cutting solution that Zalman has gone ahead with here is this lovely dust filter that I absolutely hate and not only because it's kind of difficult to remove but you know it's it's okay to access it and you can clean it but I don't like these filters at all I prefer something a bit with more mesh the i/o here is also quite diverse with four USB ports audio jacks that Chrome so they're not weirdly colored reset button and a giant power button so that's very nice at the top and I do appreciate that these panels just pop off with a little bit of force they're not sitting on any like hinges that you have to sort of going with your fingers and then plot pry open so the panel itself is very it's just plastic there's this little piece here that is removable that allows for a little extra air to exit I do like this cover because it prevents dust from falling onto this open area I guess if you need more airflow you can remove it so that the exhaust is actually coming right out now one of the impressive things on the interior about the z9 eel is the fact that we have five fans included we have two blue LED fans at the top and so they're all 120 mils one at the back and two of the Front's for intake so usually we see one or two intake fans for budget enclosure like this but we have five which is pretty impressive and on the interior itself it has everything we like a nice power supply shroud with an opening at the front so that if you do populate a radiator there we have two removable five in the quarter inch drive base which is awesome if you do want to populate the radiator here you can remove the bottom five the quarter inch drive bay in order to populate anything on that spot there and check out that hole clearance here just because we don't have a standard hard drive cage it allows us to populate longer graphics cards just to make the intake a bit more open and non restrictive and also rubber grommets what rubber grommets on a $69.00 enclosure five fans everything that's so far that's coming about the z9 eel is impressive we have two SSD slots here and on the back we have little velcro straps for cables which is normally not seen on on this case and we usually never even see rubber grommets which is awesome a power supply area that's long enough and a removable hard drive cage for two drives with these weird shaped drive caddies now looking at the bottom here we do have a dust filter that is removable underneath the power supply and fairly large case feet with these rubber pieces to prevent vibrations and stuff but I'm noticing it's leaving a bunch of marks on my white table so just be worried of that so the last thing to do is build a system into it I do not foresee any issues with assembly but well let's find out ladies and gentlemen z9 Neal the system is now complete first of all the system looks really nice and clean I love power supply brackets because they hide all the cable mess that is coming out of the power supply I appreciate the cutouts everywhere where possible and there's also if you are going for the micro ATX layout there are two rubber grommets underneath the micro ATX board where the micro to export would go however for a standard ATX you use the cutouts on the power supply bracket now do notice the blue ambient LED coming from the two above fans which gives off nice ambient glow illumination for the interior it would be cool to have two more in the front so you can have this uniform illumination however one thing that I really dislike about the z9 eel as the fact that both the top and the front fans use molex connection for power so there is no three pin and there's no a four pin you know you cannot connect them to your motherboard you cannot connect them to your fan controller it sucks that you cannot control the fans one other major disappointment for me was the installation of these SSDs it's awesome that we have dedicated this as these spots and usually we see like a little SSD caddy that you can install the SSD on it and attach the catechol case which is very standard now here we only have just a simple wall that you screw in the SSDs to it's an okay system but one major bite you have these two cutouts which are on the right side of the SSD so if you want the SS need to be positioned the right way so it's not upside down you have to use these cutouts on the right side which means it's very difficult to wire stuff in and also because the fan is right in front of that this is the versus the spot it's very difficult to access so what you have to do is rotate the SSD so it's facing towards the motherboard area so you can wire all the stuff appropriately and these rubber grommets right on the side there so cable management becomes so much easier however the SSD is now flipped quick little shirt change in bar back at it I love pretty much everything about the z9 neo except two things molex connections for the fans what is that about give us standard three-pin fan headers so we connect the fans to the mother bored and be done with it don't like the small X approach the second thing is SSD mounts I would love some type of caddy installation so that you can remove them without having to worry about having to deal with all types of screws and also cable management is a little bit off but everything else about the z9 neo screams good job with a nice window nice internal layout with a power supply shroud all the appropriate spots for cable routing rubber grommets LED fans are a little bit so and so you know we don't have RGB so but please does add a little bit ambience on here and cable measurement at the back is all fine and dandy and it was so close and rewarding this case the damn good value a word simply because we have so much in it but if it wasn't for those molex fans it gotten so close so close but guys that is it for our review of the Zalman z-9 neo let us know if you agree with our decision of not awarding this case a damn good value or words simply because of the Moloch's connections for the fans is that justifiable in my eyes yes but we'd love to hear your opinion I'm a Dmitry with her recognized thanks much for watching don't forget to subscribe for more similar content and we'll see you in the next video