MSI Z97 Nightblade Review

Once you take the side panel off, you’ll find the 120/92mm fan mounting bracket that you will need to use if you want to install a liquid cooler like we did. That is removed with two more screws, then slides out easily. Once that’s off you have a clear view of that Z97I Gaming AC board, the slot loading optical drive and the large space for graphics cards down at the bottom! In total, you can throw one 3.5″ drive and two 2.5″ drives in here, along with the optical, although something to note is you will get a 2.5″ drive adapter that lets you put 2 mSATA SSDs in and use on Sata port for it if you buy this yourself – our sample didn’t come with one unfortunately.

A nice touch MSI added was all the cables such as the SATA cables are labeled, making first time PC builders a little more confident about where everything goes! Talking of building – my experience with building in it was actually pretty good. It comes the easy to use drive slides which secure in well for SSDs, the RAM was a tight fit but easy enough, the CPU and CPU cooler installation was made incredibly easy by the Cooler Master Nepton 120XL’s mounting… Just amazing.. But anyway, the graphics card was easy to install as well, as long as you held the power cables outside the case out the way while you installed the card, then plugged it in. The PSI comes with two 6+2 pin connectors meaning you can fit almost any card in here, should you want to.

Once everything is installed, it’s a little tight and runs a bit hot – but that is to be expected with such a small form factor system and such power-hungry components! The XFX HD7870 got a tad loud since it was sitting at its usual 85 degrees, but none-the-less was alright. My only real gripe with it is that I had to use a 4 pin fan splitter to power the pump and the fan, meaning if you choose to install fan on that 120mm bracket, and happen to actually use a CPU cooler, you’ll have to purchase your own fan splitter for it! I would like to have seen a second header free, but that is me being picky.

As I explain in the video (which you should watch!), this has great I/O, its stylish and would fit most peoples use case as its small, sexy and has options for everything. The only down side is it can be noisy under load and for first time builders, the tight space can be difficult to work with. But other than that, this is an amazing barebones PC (doesn’t come with a CPU, CPU cooler, RAM, HDD or GFX card) and while not cheap, as a decent spec to fill this PC up will still set you back around £700-800!

So. What’s my final verdict? Here: this PC is amazing for its size. With the right hardware, this performs very well, and can be kept reasonably quiet with some planning. If you are in the market for a decent gaming PC, and want something small that you could easily take with you anywhere – this is your ticket! The Z97 Nightblade gets the ‘Worth Money’ award, as if you’re looking for a small PC, it’s worth your money!