Hardware installation in the Zero was as smooth as silk. The drive rails for the optical and hard drives worked as advertised, as did the tool-less expansion slots. The only issue I ran into was installing the power supply, which required me to remove the top 80mm fan in order to have enough room to slide the psu into place.

Complete system specs:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ @ 2.7 GHz
750w SilverStone Zeus PSU
2GB OCZ PC-4000 EB Dual Channel DDR
DFI nf4 Lanparty SLI-D
XFX 7800GTX Extreme Edition (490/1300) Card
Noctua Heatsink with Dual 92mm Fans
Hauppauge PVR-150 TV Tuner
Creative Labs X-Fi PCI Sound Card
2x 400GB Seagate 7,200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0 HDDs in RAID 0
120GB Western Digital 8MB Cache 7,200 RPM HDD
74GB Western Digital Raptor HDD
DVD Drive



As you can see, there is still plenty of room inside the case, even with my system installed. The non-sleeved power supply makes the clutter look a bit worse than it actually is.



The Zero fits right in with the rest of my workstation.

Findings and Conclusion

Overall, I found the NZXT Zero to be an excellent case, inside and out. Starting with the exterior, the high gloss paint contrasts nicely with the brushed aluminum on the front bezel. Speaking of aluminum, the entire case is crafted from aluminum, making for a lightweight (and easily moddable) chassis. The Zero makes use of sleek and subtle lines, a change that has been noted in the most recent NZXT offerings. I really like the placement of the front USB/Audio/Firewire ports, especially with my desk setup. The four side panel 120mm intake fans definitely make a statement and have been the subject of conversation with more than a few of my friends that have seen the case in action. Inside, we have plenty of room to work with. The Zero can hold up to six 3.5" drives internally. Tool-less drive rails make installing these drives and the optical drives a snap. The tool-less expansion slot idea is not something I have been fond of in the past, but this system works great, holding your cards in place securely.

Looks and features can only get you so far on paper, though. So how does the Zero perform in everyday use? I will be the first to admit I was skeptical of the four 120mm side panel intake fans, dreading loud noise was in my near future. Thankfully, I was completely wrong! The Zero operates at near-whisper noise levels; one of the quieter cases I have had on my test bench in recent memory. Even with their silent operation, however, these fans pack a decent amount of airflow. Under normal operating (AIM, Winamp, Firefox, etc.) I average around 29-30 C. Full load in gaming brings the temperature up around 38 C, which is pretty impressive. Temperatures on the chipset (according to Motherboard Monitor 5) also dropped a good 6-7 C. Load temps on the video card didn't seem to improve much, however, hovering around 65 C. Besides the video card, the only other area that I wasn't terribly impressed with was the front intake fan. Removing the side panel after the computer has been on for a while reveals a pretty warm pocket of air in the hard drive cage. A dual fan intake would have been great, or perhaps making the path from front fan to hard drive cage more free-flowing would have also done the trick.

OCIA.net has awarded the NZXT Zero our seal of approval.



As of writing, the NZXT Zero retails for $149.99 at a popular online retailer, a fair price to pay for an all-aluminum, feature-packed full tower chassis.

Thanks to NZXT for supplying us with this review sample.