NZXT Beta Evo Mid Tower Black Steel Computer Case

As mentioned before all of the drive rails and drive bays are screw less, except that you do have to screw the rails to your hard drives. This is not the case for the optical drives as they are secured into their bays with a different mechanism. This means that the drives of all kinds are simple and easy to install and remove. As you can see in this photo the drive slides right in and out of the internal drive bay with ease.

Installing the motherboard required very little work. Just screw in the standoffs and insert the motherboard. I do have to admit that this is the point in the build where I did run into a situation that I found to be a negative for this case. The metal that the case is made from is very thin and is flimsy to say the least. Because of the thin metal it is easy to distort the shape of the case, and due to this when I was trying to install the back cover for the inputs on the motherboard I had to tweak the case to get it into place. It wasn’t just that; I had to actually tweak the entire case to get the rear inputs of the motherboard to line up with the rear cover and then insert my sound and graphics cards to hold the case into place. I want to mention again I don’t want you to take this as completely negative as I am sure this was done to keep the cost of the case down and in the end this little problem does not affect the operation of the case and there is very little pressure put on my cards.

Speaking of my graphics card, I have the 9800 GTX+, and as you all know this is not a small card. I was more than pleased when I put it in and there was still plenty of room to spare between the card and the drive bays.

We all know how much we like to have a clutter free case especially if you are into the thermal dynamics and airflow inside your case. Well, NZXT made this easy. Removing the right hand side panel of the case which is the underside of the motherboard tray is a great place to hide the majority of your wiring. If you are lucky enough to have a modular PSU you won’t run into the mass of PSU wires that I had to hide. Other than that I was able to run every wire behind the motherboard tray which resulted in a much cleaner looking case. As you will see I did not spend a great deal of time with the wiring for this review but did, in fact, clean up the wiring later on so please stop laughing at my wiring job.

Now that we have all stopped chuckling at my wiring job, let’s discuss one of the most important features that a good case can offer: good cooling and airflow. As I mentioned earlier I tested the case with what it came with stock, nothing more. This entailed a front mounted 120mm intake fan and the fan that is mounted on the CPU cooler. OK, so the average temperature in my house is about 76 degrees, and even with this minimal cooling setup the ambient internal temperature of the case was around 81 degrees. Not too shabby if you ask me. I have reviewed cases with far more fans that bragged about their airflow that did not run as cool as this case runs. I do have to mention one possible down side to the airflow design of the case. Because of the mesh slot and bay covers I would have to imagine that if you installed all of the possible fans onto this case, the inside would become a giant dust bunny. I have not proven this, it is just an assumption from years of experience so don’t take my word as the law.

All of the internal wiring harnesses are clearly labeled and are very easy to hide as well. The one big disappointment I did have with this case is just a little one but to me it was an important one. There are no fan screws included in the hardware pack for the case. You would think that with six spots to install fans they would have stuck some fan screws into the bag with the other screws.