NZXT Panzerbox Mid Tower Case Review

Installation pg.2


Optical drive installation in the Panzerbox is quite simple. Although it does not enjoy tool-free mounting with switches or latches like many enthusiast grade cases, the included thumb screws make installation very straight forward; simply line up the mounting holes and tighten away.

We did run into a minor snag with our Pioneer optical drive in the Panzerbox, unfortunately. Its a slightly older and longer model than some of the newer SATA drives. It protruded over the top right corner of the motherboard and actually blocked one of the memory latches. Although the Panzerbox is a very wide case, there is not a lot of front to back space, and clearance between the motherboard and the drive bays is sparse.


There is unfortunately very little space behind the motherboard tray to hide away PSU leads and other connectors. We did find the little notches in the motherboard tray a convenient location to zip-tie the front header leads though.


Once we had everything except the PSU installed, the case appeared nice and spacious.


The spaciousness disappeared pretty quickly once we installed the PSU, however. The PSU mounts with little difficulty, but it’s odd location makes cable management a real challenge. We stuffed unused leads underneath the PSU and out of sight below the bottom video card, but we couldn’t help but feel that the case was awfully cluttered with PSU leads. Thankfully, our Antec Signature 650W PSU is modular, so unnecessary cables can be omitted. Bundling PSU leads together wherever possible with zip-ties also helps to keep things a little more under control.

The PSU location in the Panzerbox is definitely a con when it comes to cable management, but we’ll try to reserve judgement at this point as there are some cooling performance considerations in this design.


Although the odd PSU mounting location posed some challenges, we were able to get the case wired up and ready to go without too much trouble.

Since this is undoubtedly one of the Panzerbox’s most distinguishing features, we’ll be testing the case with both a Corsair TX-750 PSU and our reference Antec Signature PSU. The Corsair PSU has a bottom mounted fan that should help to exhaust hot air from around the video cards, and the Antec Signature will intake air farther toward the front of the case due to its rear mounted fan. We’ll see just what kind of impact this difference will play in both GPU, CPU and PSU temperatures in the “Cooling Performance” section.