February 15th, 2011

NZXT Panzerbox

Conclusions

The Panzerbox is definitely a step up from the Beta that we saw recently; the black aluminium constructions looks top class with the whole chassis well put together. The side-mounted power supply allows for the reduced height and whilst this is good, I can’t help but feel that I’d prefer either a top or bottom positioned PSU nine times out of ten. It just makes cable management much easier giving more space to plug in the cables.

The removable motherboard tray does at least allow components to be switched very easily without removing the power supply which would quickly become a laborious task. Moreover, the fact that the tray uses thumb screws and doesn’t require the side panels to be taken off first, shows a good line of thought from NZXT allowing instant access to the internals (well, after unplugging the cables).

The cooling capabilities are plain to see and if only the noise levels were a little lower, we’d have had a great three-fan system on our hands. I might add that creating the perfect balance of cooling and noise levels is a fine art to tune though.

So there we have it – the NZXT Panzerbox. The case manufacturer has certainly grabbed the initiative by playing around with the PSU positioning and adding a very functional motherboard tray. The idea is fantastic but just a few bits and pieces let the chassis down. With a few tweaks it could be awesome but make no mistake, this is still a very good case.