BitFenix Nova Mid-Tower Chassis Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

The BitFenix Nova is available from Overclockers UK for a very reasonable £26.99 for the windowed model in black or white, while the non-windowed model is just £23.99 and is also available in black or white. This is exceptional value for money and will no doubt be hard to beat for anyone looking for a mid-tower chassis.

Overview

The BitFenix Nova is exceptional value for money, offering a perfectly capable mid-tower that is going to appeal to a lot of system builders who don’t want to spend a huge amount of money. Of course, it is cheap for a reason and does come with a few small drawbacks that should be considered before purchase. The panels are quite thin, so if you’re running noisy hardware, it’s possible the case could suffer from vibrations, noise leakage, or even prove easy to dent if you’re likely to kick it, by accident or on purpose. Then we’ve got the lack of pre-installed fans, sure it does help keep cost down, but if you’re putting a graphics card in here, you’ll want at least one extra fan for air intake. If you’re fitting a 120mm AIO in the back, you could easily move the rear 120mm pre-installed fan to the front to save costs. Finally, the rear expansion slots are a snap-off design, not a deal breaker, but something worth keeping in mind when you upgrade your system at a later date.

All those issues aside, and they’re fairly minor issues and nothing I wouldn’t have expected at this price range, you do get a lot of great features from this chassis. Firstly and most importantly, it can house a fairly decent system as you’ve seen in our test build today. There’s a reasonable amount of storage bays and there’s reasonable connectivity on the front panel. It looks nice too, with a clean front panel and a huge side panel window that is perfect for showing off your build. Cable routing is very limited, but the space behind the hard drive bays is more than adequate for even first-time system builders to achieve something neat and tidy.

At just £23.99 – £26.99 there’s a lot of chassis here for a very small investment. If you’ve blown all your budget on fancy hardware such as a more powerful graphics card, the Nova is going to put a smile on your face.

Pros

• Nice overall design
• Large side panel window
• Reasonable cable management room
• Long GPU support
• Dust filter on PSU air intake
• Supports a 120mm AIO in rear
• Very affordable price
• Black/white window/non-window models available

Cons

• Thin panels
• Only one pre-installed fan
• Snap-off expansion slot covers

“The BitFenix Nova Mid-Tower is a great little chassis that’s perfect from a mid-range system build. If money is tight and you want a great looking system build, you’ll find a lot to love with the Nova.”

Thank you OCUK for providing us with this sample.