Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
Benchmarks and Final Review
For comparison purposes, we pit the NZXT H700i against the Antec P110 Luce, Bitfenix Enso, and the be quiet! Dark Base 700. The cases used for comparison are of similar size and features, and all have tempered-glass side panels.
With fan speeds set at 1400 RPM, CPU core temperatures on our budget quad-core i5-7500 processor running at 3.8 GHz were easily some of the best we've ever recorded with this test system. At just 38°C over the ambient temperature of 25°C, the massive airflow provided by the three 120mm intake fans made quick work of the heat generated by our test system, and regardless of how hard we pushed our test system we couldn't get the H700i to come close to breaking a sweat.
GPU temperatures also benefited from the direct airflow provided by the triple 120mm intake fans. Registering 47°C over the ambient temperature, these test results are once again some of the lowest we've seen in this test configuration. Now it's time to find out what kind of acoustic performance we can expect.
Noise-wise, the NZXT H700i performed similarly to other mid-tower chassis equipped with a large tempered-glass side panel. At idle, this chassis performed very well at just 31.1dBA. Under full load, the noise output was slightly higher than the Dark Base 700 but less than the Bitfenix Enso. Even with a closed front panel and a thick tempered-glass side panel, the number of intake fans adversely affected acoustic performance. Thanks to the included fan controller, fan speeds can be adjusted to reduce noise output without sacrificing much in the way of thermal performance.
We determine acoustic efficiency, also referred to as cooling-to-noise ratio, by averaging all five of our tests to determine a base value.
Although looks are subjective, we think this is a very handsome chassis, and the clever color choices offer enough variety for just about everyone. This chassis doesn’t just look good either; it performs very well and comes with a number of premium features that set it apart from the crowded mid-tower market. On the other hand, great looks and above-average performance come at a premium cost. As a side note, the lack of at least one USB Type-C port seems like a glaring oversight in such a premium case, especially in this price range.
MORE: Best Cases
MORE: All Case Content
