NZXT Alpha Mid Tower Case Review

Installation

The process of installing and uninstalling components into the Alpha is no harder than doing so with any other mid-tower case on the market. On the other hand, NZXT has implemented a few features which will make your work alot less tedious in such a confined space. Let's be honest; once you have worked in a full tower case, going back to a mid-tower design is like throwing yourself into a torture chamber. Let's take a look at what NZXT has done to this case to make your life a little easier.


The CD and Floppy drive clips are fairly easy to secure. Just line them up with the holes of the drives with those of the case, push in, and lock them by turning them clockwise. The clips were surprisingly sturdy and the drives did not need any additional support.


When installing drives into some mid-tower cases I have had issues with longer 5.25" drives getting in the way of the power supply cables. With the Alpha, there was more than enough space between even the longer DVD drive and the power supply.


Since I did not encounter any large problems with this build, I will leave you with the final shot of all the components installed. As you can see, my 7900GTX fit without much of a problem but getting an 8800GTX to fit in the Alpha can get really tight. All of the cable routing options contribute to make this one of the cleaner builds I have done and I have to say that the ALpha is a joy to work with.


Cooling Performance

The following cooling comparison is done between the Thermaltake Soprano and the NZXT Alpha with with a controlled
ambient temperature of 20ºC. It should be noted that both cases were kept in their stock form (aside the removal of the side 120mm fan on the Alpha which will be discussed later) for these tests.

Hardware used:

CPU: Pentium D 805
Ram: 2GB G.Skill HK-series DDR2
Motherboard: Asus P5B Deluxe
Power Supply: OCZ GameXstream 700W
GPU: Asus 7900GTX
CPU Cooling: Tuniq Tower 120
OS: Windows XP Home edition

Programs Used for Temperature Monitoring

- Asus PC PROBE II
- Speedfan 4.33
- ATITool 0.26
- nTune

Tools used to load components

- Orthos Beta
- ATITool "Spinning Box"


Results


The temperatures of all the components are relatively the same from one case to the other, except for the system temperature. In this test we had to remove the side fan of the Alpha due to some unforseen problems which we will discuss later. Nonetheless, it is evident by the system temperature what this NZXT case would benefit from a front intake fan installed. To tell you the truth, the heat generated by most of the components really has no where to go without good airflow and the temperatures reflect this.