NZXT Tempest EVO Author: faceless105 -- Posted: 2011-01-09
Right out of the box, the NZXT Tempest EVO has a great look to it. This case comfortably sits on the larger end of mid sized cases with all of the drive bays it has to offer. Without getting too much into the specs right away, the Tempest EVO has a ton of great features and conveniences, and best of all, it delivers them with some style.
Now that the introductions are over, how about some of those specs?
9 DRIVE BAYS
- 3 EXTERNAL 5.25" DRIVE BAYS ( up to six 5.25" )
- 1 3.5" External bracket
- 8 INTERNAL 3.5" DRIVE BAYS
- Screwless Rail Design
Cooling System
- Front, 2 X 120 mm Blue LED (included)
- Rear, 1 X 120 mm (included)
- Side panel, 1 X 120mm Blue LED (included)
- Top, 2 X 140mm Fan (included)
Supported Motherboards
- E-ATX ATX, MICRO-ATX, BABY AT
- Convenient IO support on the top front of the case as well as the power and reset buttons.
- 2x USB
- Audio Line in and Line out
- 1x eSata
Now I think it's time for the first hand experience...
So I'll start from the beginning. Like I said in the into, the Tempest EVO really manages to pack in a lot of features into a small package, and it does so with some style.
I'll start with all the cooling. The specs mentioned this rig comes with six 120mm fans. These fans provide an excellent Air Flow. Not just to they move a lot of air, but they're all 120mm fans, so they're able to do so while keeping the noise level down low enough that you don't notice the volume.
Additionally, as you can see in the image above, the PSU mounts on the bottom of the case. This makes things pretty convenient from two directions. The first is the vented bottom of the case with the rubber mounts for the PSU to rest on. This keeps the volume down, and lets your PSU vent some warm air without ever heating the inside of your case. Additionally, this bottom vent has a filter over it to help prevent your PSU from getting clogged with all those annoying things it can suck in.
The second convenience factor of this case is the wire management. With your cables below everything, you're easily able to run them behind the motherboard tray and pop them out to your drives.
The next factor that we really appreciated that a lot of people may not make a note of is the motherboard tray itself. It doesn't slide out, but we're not taking away any points for that because of the huge amount of space in this case. The feature that really caught my attention, as someone who's done a lot of CPU cooler reviews, is the opening on the back of the motherboard tray where the CPU cooler would go. This makes things incredibly convenient if you're ever upgrading and don't feel like completely disassembling your rig just so you can have a better heatsink.
Installing the drives was very straight forward as well. The Tempest EVO comes with a strong tool less design. CD/DVD drives simply lock in, while your hard drives are able to slide in and snap into place.
Now in this build we installed your typical air cooled setup, but incase you decided to go water cooling, the dual 120mm fans at the top of this case would be excellent for mounting reservoir or your radiator. Additionally, you're able to slip your tubing through the back of the case as well as any wiring you might need to move around without worrying about scratching it up.
And like I said before, in the end, you wind up with a pretty stylish build that has excellent cooling, and was made possible with a ton of convenient features.
This is one award that I feel is definitely warranted.
As always, if you guys have any questions or comments, I'd love to hear them!
