NZXT Switch 810 Review

Written by Harry Butler

March 7, 2012 | 07:56

Tags: #switch #switch-810

Companies: #nzxt

NZXT Switch 810 - Interior

Inside, the Switch 810 is both superbly laid out and very well featured. The motherboard tray is huge and supports both E-ATX and XL-ATX motherboards, as well as standard ATX and Micro-ATX boards. Rubber-covered cable-routeing holes are everywhere, with a huge cluster at the bottom of the case to service the floor-mounted PSU. There’s also a vital cut-out in the top left corner for that pesky EPS12V power connector, along with a large CPU-cooler cut-out.

NZXT Switch 810 Review NZXT Switch 810 - Interior NZXT Switch 810 Review NZXT Switch 810 - Interior
Click to enlarge

Nine expansion card slots cater even for those super-sized motherboards, while a pair of pull-out 3-drive hard disk drive cages provide room for storage. The cages are secured with thumb screws, before sliding out to reveal three HDD trays which can also double up as 2.5in mounts. While the cages are removed to the left, the individual trays are removed to the right, so maintenance and drive replacement can be done just by removing the right hand side panel.

Each hard disk cage also sports a positional 140mm fan mount to direct airflow onto your hardware, a clever way of getting around the airflow issues inherent in such a large case. Above the 3.5in drives are four 5.25in drive mounts, with one serving as a hot swappable 3.5in mount and the other three offering tool-less fittings.

NZXT Switch 810 Review NZXT Switch 810 - Interior NZXT Switch 810 Review NZXT Switch 810 - Interior
Click to enlarge - The hard disk cages boast positional fan mounts, while the rear exhaust fan can be repositioned vertically

Out of the box the Switch 810 carries four 140mm fans; one fitted as a front intake, one as a rear exhaust, one as a roof exhaust and the forth into one of the internal 140mm mounts. There’s plenty of room for adding your own additional cooling though, with an extra 120/140mm mount to the front, a pair of 120/140mm fan mounts in the floor, the second internal positional 140mm fan mount and the huge triple 120/140mm fan/radiator mount in the roof. The rear exhaust fan also offers something of a unique feature with positional mounting points allowing you to adjust the height of the fan so it’s in line with your CPU cooler.

NZXT Switch 810 Review NZXT Switch 810 - Interior NZXT Switch 810 Review NZXT Switch 810 - Interior
Click to enlarge - Plenty of room behind the motherboard tray and a number of cable routeing holes make cable tidying easy

To help tame the large number of fans you might fit into the Switch 810, NZXT has included a Molex to 7 x 3-pin fan PCB, which can be placed anywhere on the backside of the motherboard tray. It’s convenient, allowing you to choose the destination for your cable routeing, but sadly lacks any degree of built-in fan control. There’s plenty of room behind the motherboard tray for general cable routeing too, although it’s worth mentioning that our photos show a post-tidied case; sadly it doesn’t come out of the box looking quite as smart.

NZXT Switch 810 Review NZXT Switch 810 - Interior NZXT Switch 810 Review NZXT Switch 810 - Interior
Click to enlarge - The roof's radiator mount has no problem accomodating a triple 120mm fan radiator. Bosh.

It’s the roof’s huge triple 120/140mm fan radiator mount that had us most excited though, with a wealth of space above the upper-most motherboard standoffs. We fitted our triple 120mm fan radiator without issue, and there was still enough room for internally mounted cooling fans, in addition to the external fan mount space.

The fact that the Switch 810 can house a large full-thickness radiator in the roof is great, but the ability to fit fans in a push/pull configuration too is the icing on the cake. A number of current and past bit-tech staffers use this, or a very similar, water-cooling setup and we’re often bemoaning our case’s lack of radiator room, a criticism that really can’t be levelled at the Switch 810.
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