NZXT H440 Mid-Tower Case Review
Big changes are afoot at NZXT. The company's new H440 mid-tower chassis doesn’t have any bays for externally-facing 5.25-inch drives. The company assures us that there are plenty of features to take up that space and make your system look even better.
We've watched the usefulness of optical drives taper off over the years due to two important trends. First, hard drives are larger, offering massive capacities at lower cost. That means you can cram a lot more of your digital information onto disk. Second, we're consuming content differently. Movies are streamed, games are downloaded, and files are backed up to those bigger, cheaper hard drives, either locally or in the cloud.
Much of the data that was transferred from CD or DVD to your hard drive now goes from the Internet to local storage. For those few cases when an optical drive is needed, one external device can serve all of your systems sufficiently.
PC case manufacturers are starting to react, bidding 5.25-inch optical drive bays farewell (even though those aren't the only peripherals this decision affects). The first representative example in our labs is NZXT's mid-tower H440, which closes the gap between the company's H230 and H630 models. You can buy the H440 in either a white finish with black accents or a black finish with red accents. It also features noise dampening, a large window, and ample fans, straight from the factory.
In the place of those scrapped 5.25-inch bays, NZXT includes more interesting features in this chassis' design. For instance, hard drives are installed differently, there are power connectors for up to 10 fans, and the interior is compartmentalized. If you like your systems clean and tidy inside, the H440 is probably going to be right up your alley. Fittingly, the case’s slogan, straight from the manufacturer’s website, is "Remarkably Clean."
Although it sold out fairly quickly after launch, the H440 is now available again online for $120 in black and $140 in white.
NZXT’s H440 features an elegant design with lighting that looks good and serves a practical purpose. Enthusiasts who can live without 5.25-inch drive bays and are in the market for a quiet (albeit not silent) enclosure with lots of features will find NZXT's H440 to be both unique and elegant.
Packaging and In The Box
When we received the H440 from NZXT, it hadn't yet been made public. Consequently, our sample didn't arrive in retail packaging, rendering us unable to unbox the case and introduce its bundle piece by piece.
NZXT's manual hadn’t been printed yet, so we only got a pile of screws, an above-average number of cable ties, a bit to help with motherboard spacer installation, and an NZXT sticker made from stiff metal foil.
Technical Specifications and Front Panel
| Manufacturer | NZXT |
|---|---|
| Model | H440 |
| Type | Mid-tower |
| Dimensions (HxWxD) | 51 x 22 x 47.6 cm |
| Weight | Approximately 10 kg |
| Materials | Plastic, steel |
| Form Factor | ATX, microATX, mini-ITX |
| Drive Bays | 6 x 2.5" or 3.5" 2 x 2.5" (Above the PSU) |
| PCI Slots | Seven |
| Fans | Fan hub with 10 x three-pin connector Front: 2 x 14 cm or 3 x 12 cm; 3 x 12 cm (1200 RPM) included Top: 2 x 14 cm or 3 x 12 cm; none included Rear: 1 x 14/12 cm; 1 x 14 cm (1000 RPM) included |
| Optional Water Cooling | Front: Up to 28/36 cm radiator Top: Up to 28/36 cm radiator Rear: 14 cm radiator |
| CPU Cooler | Up to 18 cm |
| Graphics Card | Up to 30/40 cm, including protruding cables (with/without hard drive bays) |
| Power Supply | Up to 40 cm, including protruding cables |
| Cable Management | 1.77 to 3.25 cm |
| Price | $120 (Black) $140 (White) |
Up top, the NZXT H440 features two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports, as well as the requisite HD Audio connectors, all of which are clearly marked with fittingly modern labels. The power and reset buttons are located on the far-left side of the case's top.
Controls for the optional case lighting are moved to the top of the enclosure's back in order to maintain the smooth, uninterrupted appearance of the most visible panels.
1. It is a mid tower/ less expansion slot, only 7. putting 3rd double slot GPU will be a trouble.
2. Poor use of 3.5 HDD space. Could have easily house 10 HDDs while still have some gap for ventilation
3. while dropping 5.25 bay is a good thing since 5.25 optical ROM drive are pretty much obsolete now but there are still a lot of enthusiast front panel like fan controller are still on 5.25 bay.
They're just really easy cases in which to build a PC. They are the only company I've seen that's moved case design forward other than Corsair with the 350D (although you need a different type/amount of floor or desk space to accommodate this design). Every other case company seems to put out the same rectangular shape with intake fans blocked by nearly solid sheets of metal and tops too close to the top of motherboards so you can't push/pull your AIO cooler's rad, or case width too shallow for a decent air cooler and a fraction of a centimeter behind the motherboard tray by which you can't very well manage cables.
I haven't actually installed an OS off a DVD for ages.
Also the same logic applies the other way. I actually don't have a way to burn a disc if my desktop goes down [my Surface pro can make bootable flash drives, but it can't exactly burn a disc]. We all have a billions USB drives lying around collecting dust, why not put them to use?
Most of us do have USB ports on our rigs.
External optical drives are the way to go. It was the same thing with 3.5" disks. There was an abundance of affordable external USB 3.5" drives before they were no longer in use. Again, unless you're setting up a burn station, there's no real practical use for more than one 5.25" drive bay. Even most would argue that an external optical drive would suffice and they are quite affordable now.
-Adjustable rear fan mount
-Hidden PSU Compartment
-Max 30 watts on the Fan PCB-LED Switch
-Cable Routing Options
-Window hides HD bays
-SSD Mounting options
-Both even left out the rubber fan frame isolators on the case fans but identical retail fan has em.
I think the design could have accommodated a removable 5.25 cage....seems "the option" of going either way would make it more appealing.
I used USB to install my OS but it is a pain keeping three USBs around cause all wanna start off root, (one for memtest, one for OS ISO, one for BIOS upgrades. I also provide DVDs with all current drivers, benchmarks, utilities on it as a fall back for the user when I do a build.
I like USB's for data that changes .... prefer opticals for stuff that doesn't change ... and the fact that I can print labels makes managing 12 machines here at home / office rather easy..... would have hard time keeping track of all those USBs.
Opticals are also much cheaper and easier to manage for record documents for those who consult or work from home. Every time I design a building or other project, record copies must be filed w/ regulatory agencies. But even for those that shun opticals, they also cut out much of the enthusiast crowd with no place to mount a fan controller, OC Panels, Water Cooling Controller (Aquero 5/6) or temperature displays.
It does seem odd that the fan PCB thingie doesn't provide speed control like the Phanteks one does .... or that the PSU has no vibration isolation. The Phanteks one takes a MoBo Fan Header lead (PWM or Variable voltage) and lets you control up to 11 fans via the BIOS settings or software. I have to wonder if this might have been a feature that was missed because of the lack of documentation.
So hats off to NZXT .... great to see these features being incorporated by other manufacturers. I'd still choose an Enthoo Primo or a Luxe with the main reasons being, 1) The fan control PCB on the Phanteks, 2) a few features the 440 doesn't have (i.e. vibration isolated pump mount) and 3) even if I chose not to build with an optical, I don't like the permanence of being denied that decision if I changed my mind and 4) no place to mount controllers, OC Panels, LCDs or temp displays. An optional "bolt in" 5.25 bay, even as a purchase option, would remove that concerns.
I have had 4 portables .... found them not to be very durable or convenient w/ 12 boxes in the house. The SCSI one (cartridge 6-pak) from the mid 90s still works
EDIT: All my formatting / paragraph breaks were removed on original post, edited to fix
Pretty sure you're ignoring literally everything people have said. Firstly, if this case isn't for you because you need an optical drive, cool, have fun with one of the THOUSANDS of other cases out there with that. This is marketed to the many people who don't need it, but the whole point of variety and specialization of features is that everyone can get what they want from something on the market, it doesn't have to be the same thing. Secondly, what are you downloading that's 50GB? It's only a special niche that downloads full, uncompressed Blu-Ray movies, and the largest OS image I've seen is around 8GB. Games can get a bit out of hand [though never seen one above 20GB], but personally I'd opt for an external optical drive for those one-off installs, then I can put it away and have a clean looking computer.
This would be like someone coming on here bitching about the lack of PATA ports on a motherboard. Sure, you might need that, and there are things out there that support that need, but technology as a whole is moving away from optical drives in favor of flash storage and web streaming.
What bothered me was the terrible airflow for my pair of 240 rads. With the front panel and top panel on my PC overheated and shut down and I was not able to run prime 95 or even BF4. With the panels off all was well and the computer ran fine. The last case I had was a NZXT Switch 810 and I had no issues with this case. My rads are low fpi and both had 1450rpm Corsair 120mm SP fans supplying them with air. I considered cutting some holes in the panels, but ultimately went back to my Switch 810. Now I have an H440 for sale :-)