NZXT Whisper

Author: Harry Butler
Published: 7th November 2008

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Interior Continued

We’re a little concerned about the front drive cage’s impact on airflow though – there’s very little space between hard drives if you’ve fitted more than one, and thanks to the layout fitting just three hard disks will all but block airflow from the front intake fan.

Another concern with this layout is the strange PSU mounting, where you’ll have to mount your PSU upside down into the bottom of the case. There is plenty of room for even the longest of 1,000W+ models, though.

Fitting the PSU was more than a little tricky thanks to the crowded area around the PSU mounting, with two 80mm exhaust fans packed in tightly above the mounting and the two suspended hard drive cages also encroaching. We're also a little concerned about the airflow that the PSU will be receiving in such a cramped environment.

NZXT includes a rubber PSU mounting to help deaden any vibration from the PSU, but with the cramped confines of the bottom enclosure it was just too much hassle to fit that we didn’t bother with it in the end.

The upper main hardware enclosure is pretty bare bones, with no removable motherboard tray and a very tight fit for even standard ATX motherboards. Like the bottom enclosure, it all feels very cramped, although there is room for the longest of graphics cards as the motherboard mount is on the same level as the 5.25” drive bays.

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There are also plenty of cable routing holes around the motherboard, but the problem arises when you try and actually use them. Because the PSU is right in the bottom of the case and the motherboard and CPU power connections right in the top, our test PSU’s cables struggled to just reach the connectors, let alone be routed behind the motherboard out of the way first.

We also couldn’t hide too many cables away due to the thickness of the noise cancelling foam causing the side panel to bulge out, and thanks to the crowded lower compartment there aren't a lot of options to hide away unwanted cables behind drive bays either. A modular PSU is a must in this case; however we’d hate to see what a full set of hard drives looks like.

Our biggest concern here is the ventilation inside the case. The bottom enclosure which houses the hard drives and PSU benefits from the case’s sole 120mm intake fan and two 80mm exhaust fans (as well the limited exhaust from the PSU) while the principle hardware enclosure has absolutely no intake fan and only a single 120mm exhaust fan. There's no option to add any extra cooling fans anywhere either - what you've got with the case represents pretty much the best cooling you'll see from the chassis.

While we appreciate that NZXT has designed the Whisper for silence over cooling, this seems to us to be a pretty big design oversight, and we’ll be interested to see how the system copes with our high thermal output hardware.