NZXT H440 Full Tower Chassis Review

Final Thoughts

Price

Available for £94.99 from Overclockers UK the H440 isn’t exactly cheap, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still great value for money. It’s just as great looking at the bigger H630 and manages to be £35 cheaper. A 10 port fan hub and four pre-installed high quality fans certainly adds to the overall value, and it’s going to prove tough competition against other chassis within this price range.

Overview

NZXT have done a great job with the H440, it really stands out from the crowd. The market is full of great chassis right now, there are dozens of truly amazing chassis for around this price range so it is very important that each new one offers something unique to make it stand out from the crowd, the H440 certainly has a few things that stand out and it’s one of the most appealing designs we’ve seen so far. The clean exterior panels are a big draw, the while edition offers bold and clean looks, while the black and red edition looks much more aggressive, and I think both colour options have their benefit dependant on what kind of build you are trying to achieve.

Exterior is great, but the real winner for me is the interior section, the shroud is a common mod for a PC chassis, but there are very few products on the market that actually feature one as standard. NZXT may not be the first to fit a shroud, but they can certainly claim to have the best looking one. There is loads of space under there to pack extra cables, making cable management easier than ever and it’s something that will really benefit those who don’t have a modular PSU. The plentiful cable tie loops and cable routing holes means there is very little cable showing on the open side of the motherboard, giving us one of the cleanest looking system builds we’ve ever done, and it hardly took any effort to achieve. Also, the addition of two hard drive bays to show off your SSD’s and a light up NZXT logo on the side are certainly welcome additions.

Build quality is premium from start to finish, all panels are well finished, the few plastics that have been used are of a high quality and also well finished, all internal cables are black and come with good quality fittings. To put it simply, you’re paying a premium price tag for this chassis, but you’re getting your monies worth back in build quality alone. Cooling support is great, and now that NZXT have their G10 GPU bracket it’s great to see that we can get in a few extra AIO water coolers in the front, top and back to cater to the ever-growing demand for water cooling. Finally we have great noise reduction thanks to plenty of sound dampening material being added to all major panels, it’s clear that NZXT have gone all out on this one.

The only downsides I see are that I see is the lack of 5.25″ drive bay, they’re removed to make room for more storage while keeping the chassis exterior smaller, and also freeing up the full height of the front panel for cooling, this really is a pro – con scenario, but the need for an optical drive isn’t as big a deal as it used to be, card readers can be bought in a USB drive format and most mid to high end motherboards are more than capable of dealing with lots of fans, so the need for a custom fan controller isn’t as essential on a high end build as it used to be. But overall we still feel this is an editors choice product as I would happily open my wallet today to purchase one for my own system.

Pros

• Clean looks in and out
• Extensive support for air and water cooling
• Four high quality fans pre-installed
• Removable and washable air filters on all intakes
• PSU and cable management shroud
• Durable HDD bays
• Clear side panel window
• 10 port fan hub included
• Robust build quality
• Competitive price tag in relation to feature set

Cons

• No 5.25″ drive bays, although we do appreciate that they’ve been removed to save space and make room for more cooling and hard drive bay

“There is no other way of putting it, this is one of the best look and coolest chassis on the market today and it’s a great new entry to the already feature packed NZXT range”