Antec NX250 Mid-Tower Case Review

Complete System

Building a system inside the NX250 was pretty straightforward. It really is a very common case design, and it didn’t really throw up any surprises for me. You do have to consider the size though, it’s a little shorter from front to back, and it’s not the widest case in the world either. So if you have an enormous PSU, a monster GPU, or a super-sized CPU cooler, you may need to temper your expectations.

However, for the space provided, I think it looks great in here, and the cable routing really does a fine job. Plus, the more compact design means you can get pretty direct with your cooling.

That being said, there are no front fans as standard. Actually, the case is so compact, the CPU cooler and GPU can easily pull air through that front panel passively without much trouble. It may have a flat front on the case, but those side vents are pretty massive.

I usually have a couple of spare fans around (actually, more like a few dozen), so throwing some in here isn’t going to cause me any trouble, but keep in mind, if you’re not planning to stick an AIO radiator in the front for your CPU, you may need to order one or two fans to expand your cooling setup.

CPU cooler clearance is decent, and the Noctua U12 is a great fit. Plus, that rear 120mm fan is in a good place to help pull heat out of the system.

Of course, you can add another set of fans up at the top if you want. However, just having all that extra passive heat exhaust will be beneficial to your cooling anyway. Albeit, it’ll come at the cost of noise isolation if you have particularly noisy hardware in your rig.

As you can see, the GTX 1080 Ti fits easily enough and you have around 310mm of space for a graphics card. That means most will fit, but some of the more extreme models out there will want a longer case.

There’s no vertical PSU pass-through for the GPU, but the cut-out towards the front of the shroud basically does the same thing anyway.

As for the RGB, well, it’s certainly a welcome addition. Because it’s built into the case its self, you don’t need to worry about using ARGB fans to get some colour.

Tap the button on the front I/O panel, and it’ll cycle through all the available colours and effects.

If we put the tempered glass back in place and take a step back, I really am amazed at just how good thing thing look, given how little it cost.